MAN'S 


MORAL    NATURE 


AN  ESSAY 


BY 

RICHARD  MAURICE  BUCKE,  xM.D. 

Medical  Superintendent  of  the  Asylum  for 
THE  Insane,  London,  Ontario 


tt 


T  am  a  man  who  is  preoccupied  of  his  own  soul." 


NEW  YORK 

G.    P.   PUTNAM'S   SONS 

Toronto,  Ont.  :  Willing  &  Williamson 

1879 


[Ali  Ris^htt  RetervtJ] 


Copyright 

1879 
By  G.  p.  Putnam's  Sons 


1  DEDICATE  THIS    BOOK    TO    THE   MAN   WHO    INSPIRED  IT— TO  THE   MAN 
WHO   OF  ALL   MEN   PAST   AND   PRESENT   THAT   I   HAVE   KNOWN 
HAS   THE  MOST   EXALTED   MORAL   NATURE — 
TO 

WALT    WHITMAN. 


Socrates:  "  But  the  difficulty  begins  as  soon  as  we  raise  the  question 
whether  these  principles  are  three  or  one  ;  whether,  that  is  to  say,  we  learn 
with  one  part  of  our  nature,  are  angry  with  another,  and  vvilli  a  third  part 
desire  the  satisfaction  of  our  natural  appetites  ;  or  whether  the  whole  soul 
comes  into  play  in  each  sort  of  action  : — to  determine  that  is  the  difficulty." 

Glaucon  :  "Yes,  there  lies  the  difficulty." 

Socrates  :  "  Then  let  us  now  try  and  determine  whether  they  arc 
the  same  or  different." 

Jovvett's  Plato,  Rep. 


'« 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


No  conclusion  in  this  book  is  considered  by  its 
Author  as  absolute  or  even  certain  ;  the  book  is  simply 
a  record  of  the  way  things  look  to  him.  The  series  of 
thoughts  which  gave  rise  to  it  was  involuntary  and  ir- 
repressible. To  write  these  down  and  formulate  them 
was  not  a  choice  but  a  necessity.  The  Author  cannot 
therefore  claim  that  he  writes  the  book  to  make  the 
world  wiser.  He  certainly  does  not  write  it  for  money 
or  fame,  neither  does  he  look  for  either  as  his  reward — 
in  fact  he  is  far  from  being  certain  that  he  deserves 
any  reward  ;  but  if  he  succeeds  in  relieving  his  own  mind 
of  some  of  the  problems  which  have  weighed  upon  it 
for  more  than  twenty  years,  he  will  consider  himself 
well  paid  ;  and  should  he  also  succeed  in  transplanting 
some  of  these  problems  into  other  and  better  minds, 
where  they  may  reach  a  higher  development  and  receive 
a  truer,  a  more  perfect  solution,  this  would  be  a  com- 
pensation indeed — not  for  writing  the  book,  which  was 
not  a  labor  and  needed  no  compensation,  but  for  the 
years  of  mental  travail  that  these  problems  have  im- 
posed upon  him. 

vii 


TO  THE   READER. 


This  book  has  been  not  so  much  written  as  it 
has  grown.  "  Backward  I  see  in  my  own  days 
where  I  sweated  through  fog  with  linguists  and 
contenders;"  but  that  was  before  this  book  be- 
gan ;  at  present,  "  I  have  no  mockings  and  argu- 
ments— I  witness  and  wait."  The  thought  grew 
and  its  shadow  fell  on  the  paper,  voilh  tout. 
As  long  ago  as  I  can  recollect,  the  questions  dis- 
cussed in  this  essay — the  nature  of  good  and  evil 
— the  causes  and  proportions  of  happiness  and 
unhappiness — whether  mankind  was  getting 
better  or  worse — what  is  the  meaning  of  vice 
and  virtue — and  whether  there  were  such  things 
in  nature  as  rewards  and  punishments — and  if  so 
what  these  meant — these  questions  and  others 
allied  to  them  continually  seemed  to  demand 
some  answer.  They  received  many  answers  which 
were  in  turn  accepted  and  discarded.  But  the 
soil  was  being  prepared  by  this  constant  growth 
and  decomposition  of  ideas,  just  as  is  the  material 
soil  by  the  constant  growth  and  disintegration  of 


IX 


TO   THE  READER. 


vegetable  forms  for  the  growth  of  higher  species. 
At  last — years  ago  now — a  thought  pushed  up- 
ward through  this  soil  thus  prepared.  I  knew  at 
once  that  this  thought  contained  what  I  had  so 
long  looked  for — it  contained  it  as  the  acorn 
contains  the  oak.  The  acorn  contains  the  oak, 
but  the  oak  is  not  in  the  acorn — so  the  thought 
contained  the  solution,  but  the  solution  was  not 
in  the  thought.  The  thought  grew — it  put  out 
leaves  and  branches.  It  grew  in  me,  but  I  had 
nothing  to  do  with  it — I  had  absolutely  no  con- 
trol over  it.  It  has  ^rown  into  this  book  as  inde- 
pendently  of  my  volition  as  the  oak  is  indepen- 
dent of  the  will  of  the  soil.  The  chapters  of  the 
book  are  its  branches,  and  the  words  are  its 
leaves.  It  seemed  to  me  from  the  first,  as  it 
seems  to  me  now,  that  this  thought  has  some 
novelty,  truth,  and  importance.  But  perhaps  I 
am  quite  mistaken.  I  merely  offer  my  opinion 
— I  take  no  responsibility  in  the  matter.  The 
thought  is  no  more  mine  than  it  4s  yours  if  you 
read  the  book  and  understand  it.  I  no  more 
made  the  thought  than  I  made  myself — it  grew 
of  its  own  accord,  and  now  it  can  take  care  of 
itself ;  or  if  it  cannot  do  that,  it  can  do  as  plenty 
of  other  thoughts  have  done — it  can  die. 


INTRODUCTION. 


The  object  of  this  essay  is  to  discuss  the 
moral  nature — to  point  out,  in  the  first  place,  its 
general  relation  to  the  other  groups  of  functions 
belonging  to,  or  rather  making  up,  the  individual 
man,  and  also  its  relations  to  man's  environment. 
Secondly,  to  show  its  radical  separation  from 
these  other  groups  of  functions  ;  then  to  attempt 
to  decide  of  what  organ  it  is  a  function — to  con- 
sider whether  it  is  a  fixed  quantity,  or  whether, 
like  the  active  nature  and  the  intellectual  nature, 
it  is  in  course  of  development.  And  if  the  moral 
nature  is  progressive,  to  try  to  find  out  what  the 
essential  nature  of  this  progress  is — upon  what 
basis  the  progress  itself  rests — the  direction  of 
the  progress  in  the  past  and  in  the  future — its 
causes — its  history — and  the  law  of  it — and  to 
point  out  the  conclusions  which  can  be  drawn 
from  this  progress  as  to  the  character  of  the 
universe  in  which  we  live. 

XI 


I 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

FAQE 

Lines  of  Cleavage i 

CHAPTER  n. 
The  Moral  Nature  and  its  Limits ii 

CHAPTER  III. 
The  Physical  Basis  of  the  Moral  Nature 45 

CHAPTER  IV. 
Is  the  Moral  Nature  a  Fixed  Quantity  ? 123 

CHAPTER  V. 

The  History  of  the  Development  of  the  Moral 
Nature 157 

CHAPTER  VI. 

The  Inference  to  be  drawn  from  the  Development 
OF  the  Moral  Nature  as  to  the  Essential  Fact 
OF  the  Universe 189 


•  •  • 


Xlll 


CHAPTER  I.    . 

LINES    OF     CLEAVAGE. 


"  Les  regions  speculative  et  active  du  cerveau  n'ont  de  communications 
Yierveuses  qu'avec  les  sens  et  les  muscles  pour  aper5evoir  et  modifier  le 
monde  exterieur.  Au  contraire,  la  region  aftective,  qui  constitue  sa  prin- 
cipale  masse,  n'a  point  de  liens  directs  avec  le  dehors,  auqucl  la  ratlach- 
ent  indirectment  ses  relations  propres  avec  rintelligence  et  I'activite. 
Mais,  outre  ses  liaisons  ccrebrales,  des  nerfs  speciaux  la  lient  profonde- 
ment  aux  prin':ipaux  organes  de  la  vie  nutrition,  d'apres  la  subordination 
necessaire  de  I'ensemble  des  instincts  personnels  a  I'existence  vegetative." 

— AUGUSTE  COMTE. 


All  things,  man  included,  are  parts  of  one  great 
whole.  The  object  of  this  chapter  is  to  point  out 
the  most  obvious  and  most  natural  divisions  of 
this  whole,  which  we  call  the  universe.  These  di- 
visions can  never  be  absolute ;  the  whole  is  too 
truly  one  whole  for  that,  but  they  are  sufficiently 
real  for  our  present  purpose.  The  first  plane  of 
separation  is  between  man  and  that  which  is  out- 
side man.  Now,  it  is  obvious  that  the  external 
universe  acts  on  man,  and  that  man  reacts  upon 
and  toward  the  external  universe.  The  exter- 
nal universe  acts  on  man  through  his  senses ; 
it  acts  on  man  in  other  ways  than  through  his 
senses,  but  these  need  not  be  considered  here. 
Man  reacts  upon  and  toward  the  external  uni- 
verse in  three  ways,  namely,  by  his  active  nature; 
by  his  intellectual  nature  ;  by  his  moral  nature — • 
that  is,  he  acts  upon  it,  thinks  about  it,  and  feels 
toward  it. 

It  is  alone  that  part  of  the  external  universe 
which  we  call  material  which  acts  on  man  through 
his  senses — that  part  of  which  we  ordinarily  feel 


MAN'S    MORAL    NATURE. 


our  knowledge,  to  be  the  surest ;  but  in  reality, 
strangely  enough,  as  will  soon  appear,  this  is  one 
of  the  aspects  of  the  external  world,  of  which  we 
can  know  nothing.  Man's  receptive  faculties 
then,  his  senses,  correspond  to  only  a  small  part 
of  the  external  universe — but  man's  reactive  facul- 
ties tally  with  all  the  external  universe  which  is 
anything  at  all  to  us  in  our  present  state  of  ex- 
istence. These  considerations  apply  on-ly  to  the 
dynamic  or  spiritual  part  of  man,  not  to  the  static 
or  material  part.  Man  himself,  then,  pursuing 
the  analysis  we  have  begun,  is  divided,  first,  into 
structure  and  function — in  other  words,  he  is  a 
static  being  and  a  dynamic  being.  Of  this  static 
being,  however,  we  really  have  no  knowledge, 
and  its  existence  is  open  to  the  gravest  doubt — 
here  I  shall  not  consider  it.  Did  it  exist  it  would 
correspond  with  what  is  called  matter  in  the  ex- 
ternal world,  but  this  shares  the  discredit  of  the 
material  part  of  man,  and  will  be  equally  uncon- 
sidered here.  The  first  line  of  cleavage,  then,  in 
man,  is  that  which  may  be  drawn  between  his  re- 
ceptive and  his  reactive  functions.  In  the  ex- 
ternal world,  certain  forces,  such  as  motion,  heat, 
and  light,  are  correlative  with  man's  receptive 
faculties,  but  these  receptive  faculties  are  by  no 
means  broad  enough  to  tally  with  even  a  large 
part  of  these  forces,  and  it  is  beyond  a  doubt 
that  only  a  small  part  of  these  forces  which  exist 


LINES  OF  CLEAVAGE. 


immediately  about  us  ?:e  known  to  us  directly 
or  indirectly.  Though  man's  reactive  functions 
tally  far  more  completely  with  the  external  world 
than  do  his  receptive  functions,  yet  we  shall  see 
reason  to  believe,  as  we  proceed,  that  these  also 
signally  fail  to  cover  the  field  that  is  opposed  to 
them.  So  far  as  we  see  at  present,  then,  the  lines 
of  cleavaofe  are:  i.  Between  man,  and  all  that 
is  outside  man,  including  his  fellow  men.  2.  Be- 
tween the  statical  and  dynamical  part  of  man,' 
and  between  the  statical  and  dynamical  aspect  of 
the  world.  This  is  probably  a  false  line.  3.  The 
first  line  of  cleavage  in  man  himself  is  between 
his  receptive  and  reactive  functions.  4.  Then  the 
reactive  functions  are  themselves  split  into  three 
parts  by  the  lines  between  the  active  nature  and 
the  intellectual  nature,  and  between  the  intellec- 
tual nature  and  the  moral  nature.  In  the  external 
world  there  are,  as  we  shall  see,  lines  of  cleavage 
corresponding  to  these  two  last. 

Man's  active  nature,  or  that  part  of  him  with 
which  he  performs  all  acts  of  which  he  is  capable 
— which  is  represented  statically  by  the  muscles 
and  the  motor  tract  of  the  brain  and  cord — this 
part  of  man's  nature  corresponds  with  force  in 
the  external  world.  This  section  of  the  reactive 
functions  lies  on  one  side  of  the  intellectual  na- 
ture, as  the  moral  nature  will  be  seen  to  lie  upon 
the  other. 


MAN'S   MORAL   NATURE. 


The  intellectual  nature — that  part  of  us  by 
which  we  know — which  has  its  statical  represen- 
tative in  the  cerebrum  and  higher  centres  of  the 
cerebro-spinal  nervous  system  —  tallies,  we  all 
know  how  imperfectly,  with  phenomena  and  re- 
lations of  coexistence  and  sequence  in  the  world 
which  lies  without  us.  Its  principal  division  is 
into  the  external  or  receptive  and  registering 
functions  of  the  intellect,  such  as  perception  and 
memory,  and  the  internal  or  reflective  functions, 
such  as  ratiocination  and  comparison.  To  the  for- 
mer correspond,  in  the  outer  world,  the  so-called 
concrete  sciences,  such  as  zoology,  botany,  geo- 
logy and  mineralogy.  To  the  latter  correspond 
the  so-called  abstract  sciences,  such  as  mathema- 
tics, astronomy,  physics,  chemistry,  biology,  and 
sociology ;  the  relations  of  these  to  one  another 
make  up,  speaking  generally,  what  is  called  phi- 
losophy. 

The  moral  nature,  statically  represented,  as  will 
be  shown  farther  on,  by  the  great  sympathetic,  is 
in  relation  in  the  outer  world,  not  with  forces 
nor  with  relations,  but  with  qualities,  and  as  it  is 
certain  that  the  active  nature  of  man  does  not 
enter  into  relation  with  all  forces,  nor  his  intel- 
lectual nature  with  all  relations,  so  it  is  equally 
certain  that  man's  moral  nature  falls  infinitely 
short  of  entering  into  relation  with  all  qualities. 

Now,  to  realize  this  division  of  man's  reactive 


LINES   OF   CLEAVAGE. 


functions,  it  must  be  clearly  seen  that,  as  his  in- 
tellectual nature  only  confronts  phenomena  and 
relations,  it  does  not  confront  those  parts  of  the 
universe  which  are  confronted  by  the  active  and 
moral  natures,  which  is  simply  saying,  in  other 
language,  that  we  know  and  can  know  nothing  ' 
about  force  and  nothing  about  qualities ;  this 
may  seem  paradoxical,  but  it  is  true.  We  natu- 
rally think  we  know  something  about  force  be- 
cause we  are  familiar  with  many  phenomena 
which  we  attribute  to  it,  but  a  moderate  amount 
of  reflection  will  satisfy  any  candid  mind  that 
we  know  nothing  of  force  itself.  So  with  quali- 
ties. vV^e  seem  to  know  a  great  deal  about  them, 
while,  in  fact,  we  know  nothing  at  all.  This,  per- 
haps, cannot  be  proved ;  it  is  not  easy  to  prove 
a  negative  ;  moreover,  I  do  not  propose  to  prove 
anything  in  this  book ;  proof  never  convinces ; 
but  to  say  what  is  true  in  the  right  manner  (if 
one  could  do  it),  that  convinces.  But  whoever 
denies  it,  let  him  say  what  it  is  about  his  own 
child  or  wife  that  makes  him  love  them  while 
other  children  and  women,  equally  dear  to  others, 
are  indifferent  to  him.  Thus  we  see  that  every- 
thing with  which  we  come  into  direct  contact  is 
force  ;  force  acts  on  our  senses  ;  our  active  na- 
ture, by  means  of  force,  acts  upon  forces  in  the 
outer  world.  The  intellectual  nature,  removed 
back  from  the  outer  world  behind  the  outer  sen- 


8  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

sory  motor  tract,  deals  with  relations.  The  moral 
nature,  still  farther  withdrawn  into  the  inmost 
recesses  of  ourselves,  whether  considered  physi- 
cally or  spiritually,  deals  with  something  still 
farther  removed  from  force  than  are  those  rela- 
tions which  confront  the  intellect,  and  has  to  do 
with  an  unknown  quantity  which,  for  want  of  a 
better  name,  we  call  qualities.  The  relation  of 
the  intellect  to  these  other  two  groups  of  reactive 
functions  may,  perhaps,  be  made  clearer  by  a  com- 
parison which  seems  to  me  singularly  exact.  A 
sunbeam  dispersed  by  a  prism  falls  upon  a  screen  ; 
in  the  middle  of  the  dispersed  ray  is  a  space  of 
light ;  this  represents  the  intellect ;  below  the 
light  are  the  heat  rays,  and  above  it  the  chemical 
rays.  Let  the  heat  rays  represent  the  moral  nature 
and  the  chemical  rays  the  active  nature,  and  the 
parallel  between  the  solar  ray  and  the  whole  re- 
active part  of  man  is  very  complete.  We  have, 
then,  three  groups  of  existence  in  the  outer  world, 
and  corresponding  to  them,  three  groups  of  func- 
tions in  the  inner  world,  the  first  being  undoubt- 
edly the  razson  d'etre  of  the  last,  for  without  the 
preexistence  of  the  first  we  could  not  conceive 
the  last  coming  into  being. 

For  greater  clearness  the  results  of  this  chap- 
ter may  be  summed  up  in  a  tabular  form  as 
follows : — 


LINES    OF    CLEAVAGE. 


Senses     or 
Receptive 
Functions. 
Forces. 


'Active  Nature. 
Forces,  as  Motion, 
Heat,  and  Light. 


Man. 
External^ 
World. 


Reactive 
Functions. 
Force,  Phe-- 
nomena, 
Qualities. 


Intellectual  Natio-e. 

Phe  nomena,  and 
Relations  of  Co-- 
existence  and  Se- 
quence. 


Moral  Nature. 
Qualities. 


'External  or  Receptive  and 
Registering  Functions ,  as 
Perception,  Conception, 
and  Meviory. 
Concrete  Sciev.ces,  as  Bo- 
tany, Zoology  and  Geo- 
logy. 

Internal  or  Reflective  Func- 
tion s,  as  Ratiocination, 
Coinpa)  isoii,  and  Judg- 
Dtent, 

Abstract  Sciences,  as  Ma- 
thematics, Astronomy, 
Physics,  Chemistry,  Bi- 
ology and  Sociology. 


'  Positive  Functions  : 
Love  and  Faith. 
Beauty,  Goodness. 

Negative  Functions . 
Hate  and  Fear. 
,  Ugliness,  Evil. 


CHAPTER   II. 

THE    MORAL    NATURE    AND    ITS    LIMITS. 


"  If  then,  there  is  a  philosophical  discipline  which  examines  into  con- 
ditions of  sensuous  perception,  and  if  there  is  a  philosophical  discipline 
which  examines  into  the  conditions  of  rational  conception,  there  is  clearly 
a  place  for  a  third  philosophical  discipline  that  has  to  examine  into  the 
conditions  of  that  third  faculty  of  man,  coordinate  with  sense  and  reason 
— the  faculty  of  perceiving  the  infinite  which  is  at  the  root  of  all  religions. 
.     .     .     I  know  no  better  name  for  it  than  the  faculty  of  faith." — Max 

MULLER. 

"  Are  you  quite  sure  that  those  beliefs  and  dogmas  are  primary  and  not 
derived  ?  that  they  are  not  the  products  instead  of  being  the  creators  of 
man's  moral  nature?" — John  Tyndall. 


What  Is  the  moral  nature  ?  and  what  are  the 
lines  between  it  and  the  active  nature,  between  it 
and  the  intellectual  nature,  and  between  it  and 
sense  impressions  ?  The  moral  nature  is  a  bun- 
dle of  faculties.  Most  of  these  faculties,  though 
not  all  of  them,  are  called  passions  and  emotions. 
All  passions  and  all  emotions  belong  to,  are  part 
of,  the  moral  nature,  but  the  whole  moral  nature 
is  not  included  in  these  two  expressions.  Love, 
faith,  hate,  fear,  are  the  most  prominent  functions 
of  the  moral  nature,  if  they  are  not,  indeed,  the 
whole  of  it.  These  are  pure  moral  qualities ;  that 
is,  each  one  of  them  is  a  distinct  moral  function, 
and,  therefore,  a  -simple  moral  function.  The 
line  between  the  active  nature  and  the  moral 
nature  is  not  difficult  to  draw,  though  it  is  con- 
stantly overlooked.  The  active  nature  and  the 
moral  nature  scarcely  ever  come  in  direct  con- 
tact, the  intellectual  nature  nearly  always  inter- 
vening between  them.  An  act  which  is  prompted 
by  passion  or  emotion  is  directed  by  the  intelli- 
gence ;  for  instance,  I  desire  something — I  think 

13 


M 


MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 


how  I  shall  obtain  It — then  go  and  get  it ;  I  hate 
some  one— I  think  of  some  act  that  will  injure  him 
— then  do  it;  I  love  some  one — think  what  acts 
give  pleasure  to  that  person — then  perform  them. 
But  people  have  a  way  of  speaking  of  certain  acts 
as  being  good — of  other  acts  as  being  bad — of 
certain  conduct  as  being  moral — of  certain  other 
conduct  as  being  immoral ;  is  it  the  act,  is  it  the 
conduct  which  is  good,  bad,  moral,  or  immoral  ? 
It  is  not.  No  act  or  conduct  can  be  good,  bad, 
moral  or  immoral.  Goodness,  badness,  morality 
and  immorality  belong  solely  to  the  moral  nature. 
Acts  are  always  outside  the  moral  nature,  and  can 
have  no  moral  quality.  To  kill  a  man  is  called  an 
immoral  act — a  crime — but  it  is  only  called  so  be- 
cause of  the  moral  state  which  accompanies  and 
prompts  the  act.  Under  many  circumstances, 
homicide,  although  the  act  is  precisely  the  same, 
has  no  moral  significance ;  in  certain  circumstances 
of  self-defense — in  certain  circumstances  of  men- 
tal alienation  for  example.  Again,  we  know  that 
the  crime  may  be  cornmitted  without  the  act — 
**  Whosoever  looketh  on  a  woman  to  lust  after  her 
hath  committed  adultery  with  her  already  in  his 
heart."  To  many  these  arguments  will  be  un- 
necessary. Those  who  desire  more  illustrations 
of  the  position  takep  can  easily  think  of  as  many 
as  they  choose  fo.  themselves.  I  shall  take  for 
granted  that  the  line  between  the  active  nature 


THE   MORAL    NATURE    AND   ITS  LIMITS. 


IS 


and  the  moral  nature  is  plain  enough.  But  the 
line  between  the  intellectual  nature  and  the  moral 
nature,  though  true  and  certain,  is  not  quite  so 
easy  to  draw  or  to  see  when  it  is  drawn,  for  these 
two  lie  closer  together  than  do  the  active  nature 
and  moral  nature,  and  the  functions  of  the  intel- 
lectual nature  are  less  easily  defined,  and  are 
more  like  the  functions  of  the  moral  nature  than 
are  those  of  the  active  nature.  To  the  ordinary 
apprehension,  however,  I  hope  to  make  this  line 
also  sufficiently  clear. 

The  intellect  knows  ;  the  moral  nature  feels — 
that  seems  clear  enough.  Perception,  conception, 
memory,  reason,  comparison,  understanding, 
judgment,  belong  to,  are  parts  of,  the  intellect. 
Love,  hate,  faith,  fear,  belong  to,  are  functions  of, 
the  moral  nature ;  that  seems  quite  clear,  and  will 
probably  be  disputed  by  very  few.  But  we  all 
know  that  these  two  sets  of  functions  are,  in  their 
manifestations,  commonly  blended  together.  That 
is  to  say,  the  idea  of  a  thing  or  person  having 
arisen  in  the  mind,  a  feeling  of  pity,  tenderness, 
love,  hate,  dislike,  fear,  annoyance,  or  a  feeling 
of  some  kind  arises  at  or  about  the  same  time, 
and  is  directed  toward  the  same  thing  or  person ; 
and  to  all  appearance  the  idea  and  the  feeling 
arise  together  and  are  simply  two  aspects  of  one 
mental  act.  Now,  what  I  wish  to  argue  is  that 
this  is  not  the  correct  view  to  take  of  the  matter 


1 6  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

at  all ;  but  that  either  the  Idea  at  first  arises  and 
then  the  feeling  which  may  be  said  to  color  It , 
or  that  the  feeling  having  arisen  primarily,  It 
either  suggests  the  Idea  by  association  and  then 
colors  It ;  or  the  Idea  being  suggested  by  some- 
thing else  besides  the  feeling,  It  Is,  all  the  same, 
colored  by  It,  to  a  greater  or  less  degree. 

The  essential  distinctions  of  these  two  sets  of 
functions  is  shown  In  the  first  place  by  the  fact 
that  a  continuous  current  of  Ideational  states 
and  a  continuous  current  of  emotional  states 
constantly  exist,  and  flow  on  side  by  side  without 
interfering  with  one  another,  except  through  as- 
sociation of  certain  Ideas  with  certain  emotional 
states.  Any  Idea  may  exist  at  the  same  time 
as,  and  therefore  be  associated  In  consciousness 
with,  almost  any  emotional  state — that  Is  to  say, 
there  is  no  fixedness  of  relation  between  Ideas 
and  emotional  states.  Any  Idea  may  exist  with- 
out the  coexistence  of  any  emotional  state.  Any 
simple  emotional  state — faith,  love,  fear,  or  hate, 
may  exist  without  being  associated  with  any  Idea, 
that  is,  without  the  simultaneous  existence  of  any 
thought.  Moreover,  there  Is  no  relation  between 
the  intensity  of  emotional  and  Intellectual  action 
going  on  at  the  same  time ;  for,  during  states  of 
strong  emotional  excitement  the  intellect  may  be 
very  active  or  the  reverse,  and  during  periods  of 
intense  intellectual  activity  there  may  be  either 


THE   MORAL   NATURE   AND   ITS   LIMITS. 


17 


a  great  deal  of  emotional  excitement  or  very- 
little.  And  further,  there  is  an  absence  of  rela- 
tion of  development  between  the  intellectual  and 
moral  nature  which  could  hardly  exist  were  these 
two  not  radically  distinct  from  one  another ;  for 
in  any  given  individual  the  intellect  may  be 
highly  developed  and  the  moral  nature  very  ill- 
developed,  or  the  reverse ;  so  that  we  often,  see 
clever  men  with  bad  hearts  and  men  of  excellent 
moral  qualities  who  are  very  stupid.  We  all 
know  Instances  of  these  two  classes  of  men  as 
well  In  actual  life  as  in  history.  And  passing 
from  ordinary  life  downward  to  that  life  which  is 
below  the  ordinary  level  of  humanity,  the  lower 
level  upon  which  the  Individual  stands  may  be 
due  to  the  deficiency  of  the  Intellectual  or  of  the 
moral  nature.  For  If  the  intellect  Is  below  the 
standard  proper  to  ordinary  man  we  say  the 
man  Is  a  fool ;  if  it  is  still  further  deficient  we 
say  he  Is  an  Idiot.  But  if  it  is  the  moral  nature 
which  Is  deficient  In  development  we  say  the  man 
Is  a  criminal,  if  not  In  act  at  least  by  nature  ;  and 
If  the  moral  nature  is  still  further  deficient  we 
say  the  man  is  a  moral  Idiot.  But  the  fool  may- 
have  a  kind  and  affectionate  heart  and  the  crlmi^ 
nal  a  quick  wit.  The  intellectual  idiot  may  still 
have  the  fundamental  affections  of  our  race  fairly- 
developed,  and  the  moral  Idiot,  though  his  intel- 
lect is  not  likely  to  be  of  a  high  order,  may  be  a 


1 8  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

long  way  from  a  fool.  It  is  undoubtedly  true 
that  there  Is  a  certain  relation  between  intellec- 
tual  and  moral  elevation  and  defect,  so  that  they 
are  apt  to  coexist,  but  this  tendency  Is  not  greater 
than  is  the  tendency  of  any  two  parts  of  an  or- 
ganism to  be  perfect  or  defective  together  in 
accordance  with  the  more  or  less  perfect  impulses 
and  conditions  by  which  the  life  has  been  origi- 
nated and  is  maintained. 

To  show  the  line  between  the  intellectual  na- 
ture and  the  moral  nature,  it  will  be  necessary  to 
discuss  the  nature  of  the  relation — manifestly  a 
very  close  one — which  exists  between  them  ;  and 
to  get  at  this  relation.  It  will  be  necessary  to  re- 
solve In  thought  both  the  intellectual  and  moral 
natures  as  far  as  possible,  by  a  process  of  mental 
analysis,  into  their  ultimate  elements.  Now,  the 
ultimate  elements  of  the  Intellectual  nature  are 
concepts — that  is,  simple  ideas  ;  as,  for  Instance, 
the  idea  of  a  color,  a  shape,  a  distance,  a  weight, 
or  a  sound  ;  these  concepts  are  formed  by  a  pro- 
cess entirely  unknown  to  us  from  the  impressions 
made  by  external  forces  upon  our  senses.  These 
impressions  themselves,  no  doubt  very  different 
from  our  Idea  of  them,  are  outside  the  mind,  that 
is  to  say,  unthinkable  by  us.  These  concepts  are 
the  elements  of  which  the  Intellectual  nature  is 
built  up  ;  the  getting  of  them  we  call  conception; 
the  combining,  separating,  and  comparing  of  them. 


THE   MORAL   NATURE   AND   ITS   LIMITS.  19 

either  as  simple  concepts  or  as  already  combined 
groups  of  concepts,  we  call  reasoning,  abstraction, 
Imagination ;  the  registering  of  the  simple  or 
compound  concepts  we  call  memory,  and  so  on. 
Now,  the  simplest  of  these  concepts  that  we  can 
reach  by  our  best  efforts  of  analysis,  such  as  the 
idea  of  time,  space,  or  size,  is  undoubtedly  an 
extremely  complex  thing,  built  up  of  elements 
which  do  not  singly  enter  Into  consciousness, 
just  as  any  piece  of  matter — a  grain  of  sand,  for 
instance — is  an  extremely  complex  thing,  the  ulti- 
mate atoms  of  which  do  not  form  objects  of  sense. 
The  concepts  in  ordinary  use,  such  as  the  idea  of 
an  author,  a  book,  a  dinner,  or  a  holiday,  one  can 
see  at  a  glance  are  Infinitely  more  complex. 

Let  us  now  turn  for  a  moment  to  the  moral 
nature  ;  this  is  much  more  simple  than  the  intel- 
lectual nature,  and  by  and  by  we  shall  see  what 
appears  to  be  the  true  anatomical  explanation 
of  this  fact.  The  elements  of  the  moral  nature 
are  moral  states,  most  of  them  being  what  we 
call  emotions.  These  moral  states  are  simple 
and  compound  ;  but  there  is  this  remarkable  dif- 
ference between  compound  moral  states  and  com- 
pound concepts,  that  whereas  concepts  can  be 
compounded  to  almost  any  conceivable  degree 
without  the  union  of  emotional  states  in  the  com- 
pound, moral  states  can  hardly  be  compounded 
at  all  without  combining  them  with  concepts.    A 


20  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

plausible  anatomical  reason  for  this  will  also  ap- 
pear later.  The  chief  simple  elements  of  the 
moral  nature  are  love,  faith,  hate,  and  fear.  A 
moment's  reflection  upon  these  four  leading  ele- 
ments of  the  moral  nature  reveals  to  us  two 
striking  modes  in  which  they  differ  from  concepts. 
In  the  first  place,  they  stand  in  pairs,  the  two  ele- 
ments of  each  pair — love,  hate — faith,  fear — being 
directly  antithetic  to  each  other.  In  the  second 
place,  they  are  all,  by  their  nature,  strongly  con- 
trasted to  intellectual  states  by  being  continuous, 
while  these  last  may  be  called,  by  contrast,  instan- 
taneous ;  this  consideration  v/ill  be  more  fully 
dwelt  upon  in  another  connection.  1  need  scarcely 
say  that  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  these  moral 
states  have  all  of  them  a  wide  range  in  degree. 
That,  for  Instance,  there  is  no  difference  in  kind 
between  a  casual  liking  and  the  most  intense  love 
— between  a  slight  feeling  of  dislike  and  the  bit- 
terest hate — between  the  faith  that  makes  us  take 
the  word  of  an  acquaintance  for  a  few  dollars,  and 
the  faith  which  enables  the  martyr  to  walk  exult- 
ingly  to  the  stake — between  the  feeling  of  uneasi- 
ness that  something  may  be  going  v/rong  and  the 
agony  of  extreme  terror.  And  this  capability  of 
varying  in  degree  forms  a  third  strong  line  of  de- 
markation  between  concepts  and  emotional  states ; 
for  concepts,  though  they  certainly  stand  out 
more  strongly  and  clearly  in  the  mind  at  some 


THE   MORAL    NATURE   AND   ITS   LIMITS.        21 

times  than  they  do  at  others,  yet  have  no  such 
range  of  intensity  as  belongs  to  moral  states.  I 
do  not  pretend  that  I  can  say  positively  what 
moral  states  are  simple  and  what  are  compound, 
or  that  ^  can  analyze  these  last  so  as  to  show 
with  certainty  the  elements  of  which  they  are 
composed.  I  venture  the  assertion,  however,  that 
the  few  moral  states  already  mentioned,  love, 
faith,  hate,  and  fear,  are  simple.  The  grounds 
upon  which  I  rest  this  assertion  are  that  they  are 
each  of  them  capable  of  existing  In  the  mind  with- 
out the  concurrent  existence  of  any  Intellectual 
state,  and  that  they  defy  analysis  into  simpler  ele- 
ments. These  moral  elements  seem  to  me  to  dif- 
fer In  construction  from  concepts  by  being  simpler 
than  these  last ;  for  whereas,  concepts  analyzed 
to  the  last  elements  that  the  mind  can  reach,  still 
seem,  as  mentioned  above,  aggregates  of  simple 
elements  which  the  mind  cannot  grasp,  moral  ele- 
ments show  no  sign  of  this  composite  formation, 
but  seem  to  be  absolutely  homogeneous. 

Are  there  any  other  simple  moral  states  besides 
the  four  mentioned  ?  I  do  not  know.  It  will  be 
safest  in  the  present  state  of  knowledge  on  the 
subject  to  rest  content  with  these — to  reduce 
what  compound  moral  states  we  can  Into  these 
and  intellectual  movements,  and  to  leave  the 
doubtful  states  alone. 

The  mind,  then,  is  made  up  of  simple  moral 


23  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

States  and  simple  concepts,  and  of  the  infinite 
number  of  compounds  which  are  formed  from 
these.  These  compounds  are  of  three  kinds : 
I.  Compounds  of  simple  moral  states  with  one 
another  ;  this  class  is  very  limited.  2.  Compounds 
of  concepts  with  one  another.  3.  Compounds 
of  moral  states  and  concepts.  These  two  last 
classes  are  each  of  them  practically  infinite  in  ex- 
tent, and  make  up  between  them  almost  the  whole 
mind,  including  in  that  expression  both  the  moral 
and  intellectual  natures.  As  in  the  formation  of 
the  earth's  crust  the  simple  chemical  elements  are 
few,  and  the  compounds  of  them  almost  unlimited 
in  number,  so  here ;  and  as  in  examining  the  earth's 
crust  we  meet  in  rocks,  soil,  water,  and  living  crea- 
tures, compounds  of  all  degrees  of  complexity,  but 
rarely  a  simple  element,  so  here,  in  the  world  of 
mind,  we  scarcely  ever  meet  with  a  simple  element 
either  moral  or  intellectual  unless  we  obtain  it  by 
a  process  of  analysis.  But  that  simple  elements 
must  and  do  underlie  and  compose  the  compound 
crude  products  is  as  certain  In  the  one  case  as  It  Is 
in  the  other.  In  the  case  of  the  mind  a  very  slight 
consideration  serves  to  show  that  these  simple 
elements  are  of  two  kinds,  namely,  moral  states 
and  Intellectual  concepts.  Now,  there  are  a  few 
moral  states  which  we  can  declare,  with  a  high  de- 
gree of  probability,  to  be  elementary  and  simple, 
and  there  are  a  large  number  which  we  can  dis- 


THE   MORAL    NATURE   AND   ITS   LIMITS.         23 

tinctly  see  to  be  composed  of  these  and  concepts. 
I  do  not  say  that  this  small  number  and  this  large 
number  make  up  the  whole  moral  nature,  but  at 
all  events  they  make  up  enough  of  it  to  pass  for 
all.  Arguments  which  are  based  upon  this  large 
part  are  as  stable  as  if  based  on  the  whole ;  and, 
indeed,  my  present  impression  is  that  the  simple 
elements  which  I  shall  enumerate,  and  the  com- 
pounds which  they  form  with  one  another  and 
with  concepts,  do  make  up  the  whole  moral  na- 
ture. These  simple  elements  are  four  in  number : 
they  are,  faith,  love,  fear,  and  hate.  The  test  of 
the  simplicity  of  these  four  moral  states  is,  first, 
that  they  defy  analysis  ;  secondly,  that  they  are 
any  of  them  capable  of  existing  in  the  mind  alone, 
unassociated  with  any  other  moral  state  or  with 
any  concept ;  and  thirdly,  and  as  a  consequence  of 
the  foregoing,  the  removal  from  the  mind,  either 
actually  or  in-  imagination,  of  any  other  element, 
whether  intellectual  or  m'oral,  is  not  necessarily 
followed  by  the  removal  of  any  one  of  these  which 
may  be  present.  Three  of  these  terms,  love,  hate, 
and  fear,  do  not  require  to  be  explained  or  defined; 
but  the  other,  faith,  stands  in  need  of  a  few  words 
of  explanation.  Faith  is  the  opposite  of  fear  as' 
love  is  the  opposite  of  hate.  It  is  a  purely  moral 
function.  It  is  strangely  confounded  in  the  popu- 
lar mind  with  belief,  which  is  a  purely  intellec- 
tual function.   There  is  a  connection  between  faith 


24  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

and  belief  which  has  led  to  this  confusion,  and 
this  connection  I  will  explain.  Faith  is  defined  by 
the  author  of  the  Epistle  to  ^he  Hebrews  as  "  the 
substance  of  things  hoped  for,  the  evidence  of 
things  not  seen."  This  is  an  excellent  definition, 
but  requires  to  be  itself  explained.  As  I  have 
said,  faith  is  the  opposite  of  fear,  as  love  is  the 
opposite  of  hate.  Faith  is  almost  synonymous 
with  trust,  confidence,  and  courage.  My  idea  is 
that  each  of  these  words  is  used  for  faith  in  dif- 
ferent intellectual  connections.  The  best  way  to 
get  an  idea  of  what  faith  is,  is  to  take  a  sub- 
ject, such  as  our  condition  after  death,  or  the 
character  of  the  government  of  the  universe  as 
a  whole  in  relation  to  ourselves — on  neither  of 
which  subjects  can  our  intellect  throw  any  light 
— and  study  the  attitude  of  our  minds  toward 
those  subjects.  Now,  in  knowledge,  or  rather 
want  of  knowledge,  of  either  of  these  subjects, 
the  savage  and  the  civilized  man  are  on  equal 
terms,  for  they  neither  of  them  know  anything 
about  them  at  all ;  still,  the  mental  attitude  of  the 
civilized  man  is  very  different  from  the  mental 
attitude  of  the  savage  as  toward  these  two  sub- 
jects. If,  then,  the  mental  attitude  is  different, 
and  if  the  intellectual  nature  has  never  dealt  with 
these  questions,  as  it  certainly  has  not,  then  the 
difference  must  be  due  to  a  shifting  of  the  moral 
attitude  toward  these  subjects.     And  I  think  I 


THE   MORAL    NATURE   AND   ITS  LIMITS. 


25 


can  make  it  clear  to  any  candid  mind,  upon  a 
moderate  amount  of  reflection,  thac  this  is  what 
has  actually  happened  in  the  course  of  man's  up- 
ward march  from  savagery  through  barbarism  to 
his  present  position  which  he  calls  civilization. 
Of  course,  I  know  that  this  is  the  direct  reverse 
of  what  has  always  been  imagined  ;  it  has  been 
believed,  and  very  naturally,  that  the  shifting 
of  the  moral  attitude  was  consequent  upon  a 
change  in  the  intellectual  attitude ;  whereas  I 
say  the  change  in  the  intellectual  attitude  is 
consequent  upon  a  shifting  of  the  moral  atti- 
tude. As  regards  our  condition  after  death, 
if  our  preponderant  feeling,  as  it  is  in  the  case 
of  the  savage,  be  fear,  we  shall  believe  in  a 
more  or  less  inevitable  state  of  suffering ;  if  our 
preponderant  feeling  be  faith,  we  shall  believe  in 
a  more  or  less  certain  state  of  happiness  in  pro- 
portion to  the  development  of  this  moral  function. 
Many  men,  seeing  that  a  fixed  belief  on  such  a 
subject,  any  knowledge  of  which  is  unattainable, 
is  irrational,  discard  all  belief,  but  they  cannot 
discard  their  moral  attitude,  and  this  varies'  with- 
out a  belief  just  as  much  and  as  little  as  with 
one.  To  show  conclusively  that  the  intellect  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  state  of  feeling  on  this 
subject,  it  is  only  necessary  to  remark  that  the 
feeling  is  liable  in  many  persons,  if  not  in  all,  to 
a  wide  range  of  variation  from  time  to  time,  the 


26  MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 

variations  being  governed  by  the  state  of  the  . 
health  and  by  other  things,  while  the  evidence, 
or  rather  want  of  evidence,  and  the  belief  on  the 
subject  remain  fixed.  Our  mental  attitude  to- 
ward the  government  of  the  universe  is  decided 
in  the  same  way  by  the  degree  of  development 
of  the  moral  nature,  and  especially  by  the  degree 
of  development  of  faith.  The  gods  of  savages 
are  demons.  The  God  of  the  better  samples  of 
Christians  is  a  Being  in  whom  goodness  greatly 
preponderates  over  evil.  The  one  believes  as 
firmly  in  his  god  or  gods  as  does  the  other,  and 
one  has  as  much  and  as  little  evidence  upon 
which  to  base  his  belief  as  the  other  has.  But 
one  has  less  and  the  other  has  more  faith.  The 
character  of  the  belief,  therefore,  is  not  in  any 
degree  determined  by  want  of  knowledge  on  the 
one  hand,  or  by  increased  knowledge  on  the  other, 
but  solely  by  the  amount  of  faith,  of  which  the 
belief  is  simply  an  index.  The  belief  itself  is 
valueless  in  every  sense.  The  faith  which  sub- 
stitutes the  higher  belief  for  the  lower  is  the  most 
valuable  of  all  our  possessions.  It  is  through 
this  association  that  belief  came  to  be  considered 
so  important ;  since  men,  having  a  certain  grade 
of  faith  associated  with  a  certain  belief,  easily  fell 
into  the  error  that  the  belief  was  the  cause  of  the 
faith,  was  necessary  to  it,  was  even  the  faith  it- 
self ;  though  a  greater  error  than  this,  and,  in  its 


THE   MORAL    NATURE   AND   ITS  LIMITS:         27 

effects,  a  more  Injurious  one  to  humanity,  could 
scarcely  be  imagined.  It  Is  evident,  to  whoever 
will  think  of  It,  that  with  different  persons,  or  with 
the  same  person  at  different  times,  the  degree  of 
faith  may  and  does  vary  greatly  with  the  same 
belief.  So,  the  same  degree  of  faith  "may  and 
does  coexist  with  a  wide  range  of  belief.  This 
being  so.  It  Is  plain  that  the  belief  of  any  given 
person  only  Indicates  the  amount  of  his  faith  In  a 
very  broad  and  general  sense ;  and  the  signifi- 
cance of  what  Is  called  religious  belief  consists  In 
this,  that  It  is  a  test,  and  though  a  rough  one, 
still  the  only  test  which  we  are  capable  of  apply- 
ing, to  measure  the  faith  of  any  given  man  or 
class  of  men.  For  a  long  time  after  the  foun- 
dation of  Christianity,  for  example,  all  faith, 
speaking  generally,  which  was  not  associated  in 
thought  with  the  Christian  belief,  was  lower  than 
that  which  was  interpreted  In  terms  of  the  Intel- 
lect by  this  belief ;   therefore,  not  to  hold  the 

.  Christian  belief  was  a  true  mark  of  Inferiority. 

^This  test  is  still  applied,  and  this  feeling  still 
remains,  and  is  likely  to  remain,  In  millions  of 
minds  for  a  long  time  yet,  though  the  proposition 
upon  which  it  rests  is  no  longer  true  ;  for  In  the 
front  ranks  of  humanity  at  present,  and  on  an 
average,  the  Christian  belief  represents  a  lower 
phase  of  faith  than  exists  in  the  minds  of  those 
whc  reject  this  doctrine. 


28  MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 

Let  us  pass  now  to  compound  moral  states  and 
attempt  to  resolve  some  of  them  into  simple  moral 
states  and  concepts  ;  that  is,  let  us  see  which  of 
them  can  be  shown  to  be  composed  of  the  four 
simple  moral  elements,  faith,  love,  hate,  and  fear, 
with  or  without  the  union  of  one  or  more  concepts. 
Joy,  high  spirits,  exultation,  enthusiasm,  and  tri- 
umph are  love  and  faith  in  their  original  non-dif- 
ferentiated form,  generally,  though  by  no  means 
necessarily,  combined  with  a  more  or  less  com- 
pound concept.  And  here  I  wish  to  say  that,  in 
a  very  low  form  of  the  moral  nature,  as  It  Is  seen 
in  young  children,  and  in  all  animals  except  the 
very  highest,  the  two  positive  elements,  love  and 
faith,  seem  to  be  not  yet  separated,  but  to  exist 
as  one  primitive  function,  and  it  is  probable  that, 
if  we  could  go  far  enough  back  in  the  process  of 
development,  we  should  find  the  two  negative 
elements,  hate  and  fear,  also  merged  into  one 
primary  form.  In  the  course  of  development  the 
original  negative  element  is  in  advance  of  the 
original  positive  element,  and  in  It  separation  oc- 
curred soonest.  In  young  children,  before  love 
and  faith  make  their  appearance  as  separate  func- 
tions, they  may  be  observed  existing  in  this  primi- 
tive, non-differentiated  form,  and  in  this  state  we 
call  them  high  spirits  or  joy.  In  the  course  of  de- 
velopment of  the  individual  man,  after  the  division 
of  the  primitive  positive  element  has  become  fully 


THE   MORAL   NATURE   AND   ITS  LIMITS.         29 


established,  and  love  and  faith  have  come  into 
existence  as  two  separate  well-defined  functions, 
the  primitive,  non-differentiated  form  still  makes 
its  appearance  at  times  ;  but  the  separate  elements 
into  which  it  has  divided,  and  their  compounds, 
are  by  far  more  common  than  is  this  archaic 
form.  Envy  is  hate  combined  with  a  certain  very 
compound  concept.  Anger  and  hate  are  the  same 
thing ;  there  is  no  difference  between  hating  a 
man  and  being  angry  with  him  ;  or,  if  there  is  a 
difference,  it  is  simply  that  anger  is  a  more  tran- 
sitory and  less  intense  form  of  the  same  passion. 
The  word  jealousy  is  probably  used,  as  nearly  all 
words  are  which  express  compound  emotional 
states,  in  several  senses  by  different  people,  and 
perhaps  by  the  same  people  at  different  times. 
Sometimes  it  is  simply  hate  combined  with  a  very 
complex  concept.  At  other  times  it  is  composed 
of  the  two  moral  states,  love  and  fear,  combined 
with  a  very  compound  intellectual  state.  And 
this  last  is  probably  the  condition  to  which  the 
word  most  properly  belongs.  Grief  is  usually  con- 
sidered to  be  a  simple  emotional  state,  but  this  it 
certainly  is  not,  because  in  the  first  place  it  can- 
not exist  without  the  concurrent  existence  of  a 
concept  which  enters  into  and  makes  part  of  it, 
and,  in  the  second  place,  it  cannot  exist  without 
the  moral  state,  love,  which  also  enters  into  and 
forms  part  of  it.      Now,  no  moral  state  can  be 


3©  MAN'S  MORAL   NATURE. 

called  simple  that  requires  for  its  existence  another 
moral  state  or  a  concept.  A  mother  loses  her 
child  by  death,  and  her  grief  is  intense ;  but  if  you 
could  destroy  in  her  heart  love  for  the  child  her 
grief  would  cease  at  once.  Grief,  then,  in  this 
case,  is  love  combined  with  a  certain  concept — 
death — but  combined  with  this  concept,  and  un- 
derneath it  and  concealed  by  it,  is  another  moral 
state.  Now,  what  moral  state  has  been,  both  in 
man  and  animals,  since  the  beginning  of  the  world, 
combined  with  the  concept  death  ?  You  know 
that  the  moral  state  I  allude  to  is  fear.  Grief, 
then,  in  the  case  supposed,  is  love  combined  with 
the  concept,  death,  which  concept  is  combined 
with  the  moral  state,  fear.  This  analysis  is  hard 
to  follow,  because  the  associations  in  this  com- 
pound have  existed  so  long  that  the  union  nas 
become  what  we  may  call  organized  ;  still,  I  know 
that  this,  or  something  very  like  it,  is  the  true 
composition  of  grief.  The  analysis  is  easier  to 
follow  and  realize  if  we  suppose  that  the  child  is 
not  dead  but  dying ;  here  you  can  detect  plainly 
love  and  the  fear  of  death  constituting  the  pas- 
sion, grief.  Now,  is  it  not  plain  why  the  analy- 
sis is  easier  to  make  in  the  last  case  than  in  the 
first  ?  The  reason  is,  that  grief  in  the  case  of  ac- 
tual death  existed  in  the  minds  of  our  ancestors  for 
millions  of  years  before  they  became  intelligent 
enough  to  grieve  for  imminent  death,  and  also 


THE   MORAL    NATURE   AND   ITS  LIMITS.         31 


because  the  association  of  fear  with  the  concept, 
death,  existed  in  their  minds  for  perhaps  mil- 
lions of  generations  before  the  compound  which 
we  call  grief  came  into  existence.  The  consti- 
tuents of  grief,  then,  in  the  case  of  the  dying  child, 
have  not  had  time  to  become  organized  into  an 
apparently  simple  passion  to  anything  like  the 
same  degree  as  in  the  case  of  the  dead  child. 

The  opposites  of  joy,  high  spirits,  exultation, 
enthusiasm,  and  triumph,  which  are  compounds 
of  love  and  faith,  or  rather  which  are  these  two- 
moral  functions  in  their  archaic,  non-differentiated 
form,  are  sadness,  low  spirits,  depression,  dejec- 
tion, and  despair.  These  are  compounds  of 
hate  and  fear  in  varying  degrees  of  intensity,  and 
in  varying  proportions,  and  combined  or  not  with 
concepts.  Hope  is  a  compound  of  love  and  faith 
with  a  concept.  It  is  not  love  and  faith  in  their 
undivided  archaic  form,  but  the  two  separate 
functions  combined  with  a  concept.  Repentance 
is,  in  the  same  way,  a  compound  of  hate  and  fear 
— hate  of  an  act  committed,  and  fear  of  the  con- 
sequences. Let  the  hate  be  reduced  and  the  fear 
increased,  and  the  repentance  becomes  remorse. 
Let  the  hate  be  reduced  to  a  minimum  and  the 
fear  increased  to  a  maximum,  and  the  feeling  is 
despair.  These  are  all  immoral  states,  as  will  be 
seen  farther  on,  since  they  are  made  up  of  the 
negative  moral  functions.    Among  the  compounds 


32  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

of  faith  and  hate  are  pride,  the  combative  passions, 
and  probably  others ;  but  these  analyses  have  now 
been  carried  far  enough  for  our  present  purpose. 
The  analyses  given  are  of  the  most  simple  of 
ordinary  mental  states.  They  are,  doubtless,  very 
incomplete,  and  probably  some  of  them  very  in- 
correct. Most  ordinary  mental  states  are  made 
up  of  compounds  of  compounds  of  simple  states, 
and  even  of  compounds  of  compounds  of  com- 
pounds, and  defy  even  such  imperfect  analysis 
as  the  above.  There  are  no  compounds  of  love 
and  hate  or  of  faith  and  fear,  because  these,  being 
the  opposites  of  one  another,  in  the  sense  that 
heat  and  cold  are  opposites,  are  mutually  exclu- 
sive the  one  of  the  other.  The  compound  emo- 
tions are  always  on  this  view  : — i.  Compounds 
of  love  and  faith.  2.  Compounds  of  hate  and 
fear.  3.  Compounds  of  love  and  fear.  4.  Com- 
pounds of  faith  and  hate.  But  each  of  these 
compounds  constitutes  a  large  class — the  variety 
in  the  individual  compound  states  being  due,  in 
the  first  place,  to  variation  in  the  proportion  of 
the  two  moral  constituents,  and,  in  the  second 
place,  to  the  union  of  the  compound  moral  state 
with  a  wide  range  of  concepts.  Does  it  appear 
strange  that  the  immense  variety  of  human  pas- 
sion, sentiment,  and  emotion  could  be  produced 
by  the  combination  of  so  few  simple  elements  ? 
If  it  does,  consider  the  compounds  of  carbon  and 


THE   MORAL    NATURE   AND   ITS  LIMITS. 


33 


hydrogen,  their  enormous  number  and  great  dis- 
similarity, and  I  think  that  the  strangeness  will 
disappear. 

Concepts  and  emotional  states  being  the  ele- 
ments by  means  of  whose  union  the  mind  is  built 
up,  let  us  see,  if  we  can,  what  laws  govern  their 
association.  In  the  first  place  it  is  clear  that  the 
union  of  simple  concepts  is  more  elementary  and 
stronger  than  the  union  of  any  concept  with  any 
emotional  state,  and  that,  as  said  above,  the  union 
of  these  ideational  elements  can  be  carried  to  any 
extent  of  which  our  minds  are  capable  just  as 
well  without  as  with  the  presence  of  emotional 
states.  In  the  second  place,  there  is  no  true 
union  of  two  emotional  states  forming  thus  a 
compound  emotional  state  without  the  presence 
of  an  idea,  except  in  the  case  of  love  and  faith 
and  of  hate  and  fear,  which  cases  are  exceptional, 
since  each  of  these  pairs  seems  to  have  sprung 
from  an  archaic  form  which  contained  potentially 
the  two  functions.  That,  in  other  words,  although 
a  simple  emotion  may  and  often  does  exist  in  the 
mind  unassociated  with  any  idea,  a  compound 
emotion,  except  as  above,  cannot  so  exist.  The 
third  law  is  found  in  chemistry  as  well  as  in  psy- 
chology. It  is,  that  binary  combinations  of  con- 
cepts are  more  stable  than  tertiary  combinations, 
and  these  than  more  complex  combinations  of 

concepts;  and  that  binary  combinations  of  a  cott- 
ar 


34 


MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 


cept  and  a  simple  emotional  state  are  more  stable 
than  tertiary  combinations  of  these  elements, 
and  these  than  still  more  complex  combinations. 
Simple  concepts  being  probably  few  in  number 
and  accessible  to  all,  the  complexity  and  fineness 
of  the  adhesions  between  them  constitute  largely 
the  value  of  a  given  intellect.  The  union  of 
ideas  with  emotional  states  makes  up  character. 
Our  feeling  toward  individuals  of  our  race,  as 
well  those  related  to  us  or  known  to  us  as 
those  whom  we  casually  meet;  our  feeling  to  the 
race  at  large,  to  animals,  to  external  nature,  to 
the  unknowable  which  surrounds  us  upon  all 
sides,  to  ourselves,  to  death,  and,  in  fact,  the  ad- 
hesion or  want  of  adhesion  between  all  ideas  and 
all  moral  states,  is  what  we  call  character  in  its 
infinite  variety.  With  some  people  the  adhesions 
between  moral  states  and  concepts  are  such  as 
are  justified  by  the  opinions  and  expediencies  of 
the  societies  m  which  they  live,  and  such  people 
are  said  to  be  good  people.  With  others,  with 
equally  good  moral  natures,  the  adhesions  are 
not  such  as  the  opinion  of  the  time  and  place 
justifies,  and  they  are  said  to  be  bad  people.  It 
will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  to  have  a  high  moral 
nature  and  to  be  a  good  man  are  not  synonymous 
terms.  It  will  be  remembered  by  all  that  many 
men  with  the  highest  moral  natures  have  been 
put  to  death  as  bad  men,  the  reason  being  that 


THE   MORAL   NATURE   AND    ITS  LIMITS. 


35 


the  adhesions  and  want  of  adhesions  in  their 
minds  between  moral  states  and  concepts  were 
•  such  as  current  opinion  could  not  tolerate.  Given 
two  men  in  whom  the  associations  between  their 
moral  states  and  concepts  are  the  same,  and  the 
man  with  the  highest  moral  nature  will  be  admit- 
ted by  all  to  be  the  better  man.  Given  two  men 
with  equally  high  moral  natures,  and  it  is  plain 
he  will  be  called  the  better  man  of  the  two  in 
whom  the  intellectual  and  moral  associations  are 
most  similar  to  those  of  his  contemporaries. 
Again,  with  some  people  these  bonds  are  excep- 
tionally loose,  and  we  say  that  such  an  one  is 
unstable,  or  is  weak,  or  that  he  has  a  weak  char- 
acter ;  with  another  the  bonds  are  exceptionally 
firm,  and  we  say  that  such  a  person  is  obstinate, 
or  that  such  an  one  possesses  great  firmness  of 
character. 

The  value  and  character  of  a  given  mind  is 
therefore  determined  by  the  absolute  and  relative 
development  of  the  different  functions  of  the 
moral  nature  ;  by  the  absolute  and  relative  de- 
velopment of  the  different  functions  of  the  intel- 
lectual nature  ;  and  especially  by  the  associations 
formed  in  the  past  of  the  individual,  or  trans- 
mitted to  him  by  his  ancestors,  between  the  moral 
states  and  concepts  of  which  his  mind  is  composed ; 
and  lastly,  by  the  firmness  of  these  adhesions. 

The  fear  of  death  and  maternal  love  are  two 


36  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

good  examples  of  associations  of  this  kind.  These 
exist  not  only  throughout  the  whole  human 
family,  but  have  a  foremost  place  in  the  psychi- 
cal life  of  all  sentient  creatures.  No  one  will 
deny  that  a  strong  bond  of  association  exists 
between  the  emotion  fear  and  the  thought  of 
self  death  ;  for  the  thought  of  death,  apart  from 
self  death,  is  not  by  any  means  so  intimately 
connected  with  this  emotion ;  and  when  we  ac- 
tually lose  by  death  those  whom  we  most  love, 
we  grieve  for  our  loss,  not  because  a  great  mis- 
fortune has  befallen  them.  The  intimate  asso- 
ciation between  this  emotion  and  this  mental 
image  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  if  the  emotion 
fear  be  primarily  strongly  excited,  as  in  such 
pathological  conditions  as  will  be  referred  to  in 
the  next  chapter,  the  almost  inevitable  conse- 
quence is  that  the  thought  of  self  death  arises  at 
once  in  the  mind,  though  the  bodily  health  may 
be  at  the  time  tolerably  good,  and  the  person  no 
more  likely  to  die  then  than  at  any  other  period  of 
his  or  her  life.  On  the  other  hand,  in  a  state  of 
health,  let  self  death  appear  to  the  reason  to  be 
imminent,  and  with  most  people  the  emotion 
fear  is  felt  in  a  lively  manner  within  a  very  short 
tinPe  thereafter.  Now,  why  is  this  ?  Why  does 
the  emotion  fear  excite  the  idea  of  death,  and  why 
does  the  idea  of  death  excite  the  emotion  fear  ? 
It  is  not  because  we  know  death  to  be  an  evil, 


THE   MORAL    NATURE   AND   ITS  LIMITS.         37 

for  we  know  nothing  about  it ;  and  even  if  we 
knew  it  to  be,  past  all  doubt,  a  very  great  evil,  that 
would  not  explain  such  an  association  as  exists. 
For,  other  things  which  we  have  every  reason  to 
believe  to  be  the  greatest  evils,  such  as  sin,  pover- 
ty, and  disease,  have  not — that  is,  the  thought  of 
them  has  not — the  same  intimate  relation  with 
the  emotion  fear.  Neither  is  it  because  we  fear 
the  pain  which  often  accompanies  death,  ior  if  we 
had  every  reason  to  be  sure  that  the  death  would 
be  painless  the  fear  would  equally  exist.  Besides, 
when  men  actually  come  to  die,  either  by  some 
disease  which  leaves  the  mind  intact,  or  by  an 
execution,  they  have  little  or  no  fear.  As  soon 
as  death  is  certain,  inevitable,  close,  the  Dweller 
on  the  Threshold  departs  and  leaves  the  door 
between  the  known  and  unknown  open  and  the 
passage  unobstructed. 

The  fact  is  that  the  association  between  fear 
and  the  thought  of  self  death  has  no  basis,  so  far 
as  we  know,  or  have  reason  to  think,  in  the  truth 
of  things,  but  is  purely  artificial,  and  is,  beyond 
question,  the  result  of  natural  selection  operating 
upon  countless  generations.  For,  given  a  race, 
either  of  men  or  of  inferior  animals,  in  whom  this 
association  did  not  exist,  and  the  life  of  that  race, 
in  such  a  world  as  this,  where  every  species  is 
surrounded  and  permeated  by  causes  of  destruc- 
tion, would  be  a  short  one.     But,  given  a  race  or 


38  MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 

a  family  of  races,  emerging  from  unconscious  into 
conscious  existence,  and  through  countless  ages 
rising  to  higher  and  higher  phases  of  life,  and  it  is 
easy  to  see  that,  other  things  being  equal,  the  in- 
dividuals in  whom  this  association  began  k.  exist, 
ever  so  faintly,  would  often  live  where  their  neigh- 
bors would  die.  They  would  transmit  the  associa- 
tion to  their  offspring,  among  whom  the  individuals 
in  whom  this  psychical  feature  was  more  marked 
would  have  an  advantage  over  those  in  whom  it 
was  less  marked  ;  and  so  the  tendency  would  be 
for  the  association  to  grow  stronger  and  stronger 
until  a  point  was  reached  in  the  history  of  devel- 
opment at  which,  on  the  one  hand,  reason  began 
»-  to  protest  against  the  closeness  of  this  alliance, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  family  affections  and 
the  sense  of  duty  and  religion  began  to  take  the 
place  of  crude  fear,  and  to  make  this  association 
less  necessary.  The  mastery  of  the  higher  emo- 
tions over  the  initial  union  is  shown  by  the  readi- 
ness with  which  men  of  the  higher  races  face  death 
in  pursuance  of  what  they  consider  to  be  a  good 
cause,  such  as  the  cause  of  religion  or  national 
honor.  If  this  reasoning  be  true — and  it  is  true — 
then  here,  in  the  deepest  part  of  our  nature,  cir- 
cumstances have  compelled  humanity,  through 
countless  ages,  to  affirm  a  lie.  In  the  case  of  our 
own  ancestors,  the  culminating  point  of  this  as- 
sociation was  reached  and  passed  before  the  sepa- 


THE    moral'  NATURE   AND   ITS   LIMITS.  39 

ration  of  the  Arian  people  on  the  plains  of  Cen- 
tral Asia — before  the  existence  of  the  distinct 
races  who  spoke  Sanscrit,  Greek,  and  Latin.  And 
we  can  only  judge  now  what  tl:6  strength  of  this 
union  was  then  by  the  observation  of  races  whose 
present  stage  of  development  is  on  a  par  with  our 
condition  at  that  time.  And  we  know,  from  the 
universal  testimony  of  travelers,  and  many  of  us 
from  our  own  observation,  that  fear  bears  a  much 
larger  proportion  to  the  other  emotions  in  the 
savage  mind  than  in  the  civilized — that  it  is  even 
absolutely  more  developed ;  and  that  its  union 
with  the  idea  of  death  is  stronger  in  them  than  it 
is  in  civilized  man. 

The  union  existing  between  love  in  the  bosom 
of  the  mother  and  the  mental  image  of  her  child 
is  as  strong  as,  if  not  stronger  than,  any  other  as- 
sociation of  a  moral  state  with  an  idea.  So  strong 
is  this  association  that  almost  all  kindly  feeling 
not  only  in  the  grown-up  woman  but  in  the  female 
child  as  well  suggests  this  mental  image  in  some 
form  or  other.  In  the  child  it  takes  the  form  of 
a  doll.  To  the  childless  woman  a  dog,  or  per- 
haps a  cat,  supplies  the  place  of  the  infant  which 
should  exist  but  does  not.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  mental  image  of  all  forms  of  helplessness  and 
infancy  awaken  in  the  female  mind  this  motherly 
tenderness.  This  union  is,  no  doubt,  largely  due, 
as  in  the  case  last  considered,  to  the  influence  of 


40 


MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 


natural  selection,  since  this  cohesion  is  as  need- 
ful to  the  continuance  of  the  life  of  the  race  as  the 
other  cohesion  is  to  the  continuance  of  the  life  of 
the  individual.  Why  not,  therefore,  say  of  this 
as  of  the  other  association  that  it  is  a  fraud  per- 
petrated by  circumstances  ?  Why  not  say  that 
this  association,  also,  is  purely  artificial,  and  has 
no  warrant  in  the  truth  of  things  ?  This  book 
is  intended  as  an  answer  to  this  question  ;  I 
cannot  pause  to  discuss  it  in  this  chapter.  I 
may  say  here,  however,  that  the  question  really 
is  : — Does  the  central  fact  of  the  universe,  as  it 
stands  related  to  us,  justify  on  our  part  fear  and 
hate,  or  love  and  faith,  or  does  it  justify  neither  ? 
I  believe,  and  I  believe  I  shall  show  before  I 
finish  this  book,  that  it  justifies  love  and  faith. 
The  associations  are,  both  of  them,  undoubt- 
edly, the  fortuitous  products  of  circumstances. 
But  if  love  and  faith  are  justified,  and  fear  and 
hate  are  not,  then  it  is  certain  that  maternal 
love  is  justified,  and  that  fear  of  death  is  not 
justified. 

In  the  development  of  a  race  the  formation  of 
these  bonds,  almost  infinite  in  number,  and  re- 
quiring to  have  a  definite  relative  strength,  within 
certain  limits  of  variation,  is  of  at  least  as  great 
importance  as  the  actual  development  of  either 
the  moral  or  intellectual  natures.  And  derange- 
ment of  these  associations,  the  loosening  of  some 


THE   MORAL    NATURE    AND    ITS   LIMITS. 


41 


which  are  essential  to  life  in  a  social  state,  and 
the  formation  de  novo,  or  the  increased  intimacy 
of  union  of  others  which  are  trivial,  valueless, 
mischievous — I  say  such  derangements  of  asso- 
ciations between  moral  states  and  intellectual 
concepts,  and  going  deeper,  derangements  of 
the  union  of  intellectual  concepts  with  one  an- 
other, constitute  the  characteristic  mental  lesion 
in  many  cases  of  insanity,  and  such  derange- 
ments probably  constitute  a  material  part  of  all 
insanity. 

Our  actual  mental  life,  then,  consists  in  a  con- 
stant succession  of  these  two  sets  of  elements, 
elaborately  and  more  or  less  intimately  combined, 
and  if  I  have  failed  to  make  clear  the  fine  line 
which  separates  therr,  the  next  chapter,  in  which 
i  shall  try  to  determine  the  anatomical  seat  of 
the  moral  nature,  will  assist  materially  in  making 
this  line  clearer ;  and  it  will  be  seen  that  I  have 
placed  in  that  chapter  a  number  of  arguments 
which  belong  as  much  to  this  chapter  as  they  do 
to  that — such  as  the  depth  of  the  moral  nature, 
the  rhythmic  character  of  its  functions,  their  con- 
tinuity, their  range  of  intensity,  and  their  sim- 
plicity as  compared  Avith  concepts.  If  I  have 
made  clear  the  lines  of  separation  between  the 
moral  nature  and  the  active  nature,  and  between 
the  moral  nature  and  the  intellectual  nature,  it 
only  remains  to  drav^  the  line  distinctly  between 


42 


MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 


the  moral  nature  and  sense  impressions,  and  the 
moral  nature  will  be  isolated  and  will  stand  out  by 
itself  separated  from  all  other  parts  of  conscious 
life.  I  know  I  have  not  made  the  lines  already 
drawn  very  plain,  and  I  do  not  hope  to  make  the 
line  which  remains  to  be  drawn  any  plainer.  I 
trust,  however,  that  the  honest  and  intelligent 
reader  will  see  with  reasonable  clearness  what  is 
intended,  and  that  his  intellect  will  make  up  for 
what  is  lacking  in  mine.  Sense  impressions  and 
emotional  states  are  often  so  far  apart,  that  looking 
upon  these  examples  of  them  they  do  not  seem 
likely  to  be  confused ;  thus  the  touch  and  sight  of 
this  book  are  as  distinct  from  love  or  fear  as  one 
thing  can  well  be  from  another.  At  other  times 
the  sense  impression  and  the  moral  state  actually 
touch — even  run  together.  In  listening  to  music 
certain  moral  states  are  produced.  Where,  in 
this  case,  does  the  sense  impression  end  and 
the  moral  state  begin  ?  All  that  part  of  the  total 
sensori- emotional  condition  which  can  be  re- 
excited  without  the  sound  of  music,  as  by  think- 
ing over  or  reading  the  score,  belongs  to  the 
moral  nature  ;  all  the  rest  belongs  to  sense.  Rut 
this  statement  is  liable  to  be  misunderstood.  If 
it  were  taken  literally  and  boldly  it  might  be  said  : 
Well,  then,  the  sense  impression  is  far  the  most 
important  part  of  the  music,  for  no  one  can  de- 
rive half  the  pleasure  from  thinking  over  or  read- 


THE    MORAL    NATURE    AND    ITS   LIMITS.  43 

Ing  the  score  that  he  derives  from  hearing  the 
music  well  executed.  The  answer  to  this  is  that 
it  is  not  supposed  that  the  emotional  state — 
though  the  same,  and  covering  the  same  ground — 
will  be  nearly  so  intensely  excited  by  the  reading 
as  by  the  hearing.  Take  this  element  into  con- 
sideration, and  the  definition  will  be  complete 
enough.  This  test  is  capable  of  being  applied  to 
every  case  where  sense  impressions  and  moral 
states  come  in  contact ;  and  by  it  the  line  between 
tliese  may  always  be  drawn  nearly  enough  for  the 
purposes  of  this  essay.  Another  way  to  set  forth 
the  line  between  the  senses  and  the  moral  nature 
would  be  to  say  that  pleasure  and  pain  belong  to 
the  former,  and  happiness  and  unhappiness  to  the 
latter,  for  love  and  faith  are  the  elements  of  hap- 
piness, and  hate  and  fear  the  elements  of  unhap- 
piness ;  that,  consequently,  a  person  may  be  happy 
while  suffering  pain,  and  unhappy  in  the  midst  of 
pleasure.  And  there  is  no  harm  in  pleasure  in 
itself,  whatever  moralists  may  have  said,  but  those 
who  depend  on  pleasure  for  the  enjoyment  of  life 
are  very  apt  to  neglect  the  cultivation  of  the 
elements  of  happiness ;  and  often  not  only  neglect 
them,  but  interpose  the  most  serious  obstacles  to 
their  development.  When  this  happens  pleasure 
becomes  immoral  and  at  the  same  time  impolitic. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the 
gratification  of  the  senses  in  moderation  stimu- 


44  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 


lates  the  development  of  the  positive  moral  func- 
tions, i.  e.,  love  and  faith,  and  that  to  refuse  the 
senses  their  due  gratification  is  just  as  immoral 
and  impolitic  as  it  is  to  abandon  oneself  to  a 
sensual  life. 


%• 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE    PHYSICAL   BASIS   OF   THE   MORAL   NATURE. 


"  Tout  ce  qui  est  relatif  aux  passions  appartient  k  la  vie  organique. 
.  .  .  Concluons  done  de  ces  diverses  considerations,  que  c'est  toujours 
sur  la  vie  organique,  et  non  sur  la  vie  animale  que  les  passions  portent 
leur  influence.  .  .  .  Tout  tend  done  i  prouver  que  la  vie  organique 
est  le  terme  oil  aboutissent,  et  le  centre  d'ou  portent,  les  passions." — 

BiCHAT. 

"  The  organic  nervous  centres  are  the  centres  also  of  those  mental  acts 
which  are  not  volitional,  but  are  inslinctive,  impulsive,  or,  as  they  are 
most  commonly  called,  emotional." — Richardson. 


I  HAVE  said,  in  a  former  chapter,  that  the  physi- 
cal basis  of  the  moral  nature  is  probably  the  great 
sympathetic  nervous  system.  Let  us  see  what 
arguments  can  be  found  to  support  this  view. 
To  reach  these  arguments  it  will  be  necessary  to 
consider  the  whole  subject  of  the  functions  of  the 
great  sympathetic,  and  to  do  this  we  must  dwell 
for  a  few  moments  upon  the  structure  of  this  vast 
and  complicated  organ. 

The  great  sympathetic  consists,  in  the  first 
place,  of  a  double  chain  of  ganglia,  over  fifty  in 
number,  extending  from  the  base  of  the  brain 
along  the  sides  of  the  spinal  column  to  the 
coccyx ;  in  the  second  place,  of  certain  ganglia, 
such  as  the  superficial  and  deep  cardiac,  the 
semilunar,  and  innumerable  others,  named  and  un- 
named, scattered  among  the  thoracic,  abdominal, 
and  pelvic  viscera  ;  and,  in  the  third  place,  of  an 
almost  infinite  number  of  nerve  cords  which  may 
be  divided  into  three  classes  :  first,  those  which 
connect  the  sympathetic  ganglia  to  one  another 

(many  of  these  are  not,  strictly  speaking,  nerve 

47 


48 


MAN'S   MORAL   NATURE. 


cords,  though  cord-Hke  in  form,  but  are  prolonga- 
tions of  the  ganglia,  and  are  made  up  not  of  nerve 
fibres  but  of  nerve  cells)  ;  next,  those  which  con- 
nect the  sympathetic  ganglia  with  the  nerve 
trunks  and  the  nerve  centres  of  the  cerebro-spinal 
nervous  system  ;  and  lastly,  those  which  take  their 
origin  in  the  ganglia  of  the  great  sympathetic 
nervous  system,  and  are  distributed  to  the  various 
organs  which  are  supplied  with  nerves  from  this 
nervous  system. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  this  brief  resume 
gives  any  adequate  idea  of  the  extent  of  the  dis- 
tribution or  the  amount  of  the  aggregate  mass 
of  the  great  sympathetic.  No  part  of  the  body 
is  entirely  without  sympathetic  fibres,  and  the 
ganglia  of  this  system  are  almost  as  universally 
distributed  as  are  its  nerve  cords,  so  that  the 
whole  mass  of  the  great  sympathetic,  though  it 
cannot  be  determined  with  anything  approach- 
ing to  accuracy,  must  be  very  much  greater  than 
is  often  supposed,  and  perhaps  does  not  fall  much 
short  of  the  mass  of  the  cerebro-spinal  nervous 
system.  Indeed,  one  author  (Davy)  goes  so  far 
as  to  say  that  it  "  constitutes  a  great  part  of  the 
volume  and  weight  of  the  whole  body." 

In  minute  structure  the  great  sympathetic  is 
composed,  like  the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  system, 
of  cells  and  fibres.  Neither  its  cells  nor  its  fibres, 
however,  are  like  those  belonging  to  the  brain 


M 


} 


:■*  •  v»>^    ''^     *M»    t  ft* 
III*      • 


48  M/ty\'*     i^-M-4L    .VATVffS. 


tiwuvS  \f)  ''.)iui  .'tcrve 

•  .  'jeils)  ;  '  vv'hich  v-on- 

n«-.  I  >)inuath(f!tic    garv.^^Ua   witli    the    nerve 

»  .  :cl  the  nerve  centres  of  the  cerebro-splnal 

nfifVous  syst(;m  ;  and  lastly,  those  vviilch  take  their 
origin  in  the  ganglia  of  the  great  sympathetic 
riervous  system,  and  are  distribut.  d  to  the  variqas 
organs  v-h'-h  are  supplied  with  ner\es  from  this 
ntr>  v••^•^^  ^  ■•  ;';cm. 

5t  lYULst  not  be  Mipi         '  ih^t  this  bri'!'  >\'i;<.^'/J 
gi\es  a-^.y  ..'  v",:nt.  of  the  dis- 

tribui.'O'-  .^  <ji  ^  j restate  mass 

of  v..     No  part  of  the  body 

f<  i.hout  sympathetic  fd-ires.  an-1    the    - 

I  ,.  a  of  ^his  system  are  almost  as  universally 
di  ^tributed  as  are  its  n^'.rve  cords,  so  that  the 
>vhole  mass  of  the  great  sympathetic,  thongh  it 
cannot  be  dcternuned  with  anything  approarh- 
ing  to  accuracy,  must  be  very  much  greater  than 
is  often  supposed,  and  perhaps  does  not  fall  much 
short  of  <he  ma«H  of  the  cerebro-splnal  nervous 
sysie!' .     t  's  so  far 

as  to  sa;'  vh  '    1  I  of  the 

voh^me  and  w 

fn  rninute  stri  ^hetic  is 

con  ^  V'^""  "he  cereb*  system, 

of  f  Neither  Hbres, 

howcvci,  ^iv,  liivc  those  btiuiigiu^  lu  lu-    brain 


Ol'II.INK  OK  THF.  r.RF.AT  SYMl'A- 
IHKTIC  NKRVOUS  SYSIEM, 


PHYSICAL    BASIS   OF    THE    MORAL   NATURE, 


49 


and  cord.  There  Is  enough  difference  in  minute 
anatomy  between  these  two  systems  to  make  a 
thoughtful  observer  feel  certain  that  there  must 
be  a  decided  difference  in  their  functions. 

The  only  other  thing  to  be  especially  remarked 
about  the  anatomy  of  this  great  nerve  is  the  im- 
mense number  and  great  complexity  of  its  plex- 
uses. These  plexuses,  speaking  generally,  are 
made  up  of  nerve  cords  from  different  sympathetic 
ganglia,  of  filaments  derived  from  spinal  nerves, 
and  often  others  from  cranial  nerves.  That  is, 
in  a  given  plexus  there  will  unite  nerves  from,  per- 
haps, two,  three,  or  more  sympathetic  ganglia, 
with  filaments  from  one  or  more  spinal  nerves, 
and,  perhaps,  from  one  or  two  cranial  nerves. 
From  these  plexuses  the  nerve  cords  proceed 
to  their  ultimate  distribution,  the  object  of  the 
plexus  seeming  to  be  to  bring  together  and  com- 
bine these  various  elements  in  order  to  form  an 
extremely  complex  nerve. 

Now,  as  regards  the  ultimate  distribution  of 
the  great  sympathetic — a  matter  of  great  im- 
portance in  deciding  upon  its  functions.  In  the 
first  place,  it  sends  branches  to  all  the  spinal  and 
cranial  nerves,  which  presumably  follow  the  course 
of  those  nerves,  and  are  distributed  with  them  to 
the  organs  supplied  with  nerves  by  the  cerebro- 
spinal nervous  system.  Secondly,  it  is  distri- 
buted to  the  coats  of  all  the  arteries  In  the  body, 
3 


50 


MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 


though  the  arteries  carrying  blood  to  the  head, 
face,  and  glandular  organs  are  better  supplied  by 
it  than  others.  Thus,  the  common,  internal,  and 
external  carotids,  the  phrenic,  the  renal,  the  hepatic, 
the  splenic,  the  superior  mesenteric,  sacral,  inter- 
nal iliac,  vesical,  and  uterine  arteries  are  known  to 
be  freely  supplied  by  it.  Thirdly,  the  viscera — tho- 
racic, abdominal,  and  pelvic — are  all  supplied  more 
or  less  abundantly  with  sympathetic  nerves. 

I  will  mention  some  of  the  different  organs  in 
their  order,  according  to  the  amount  of  the  sup- 
ply relative  to  their  mass  which  they  severally 
receive,  as  well  as  I  have  been  able  to  make  it  out ; 
but  I  must  state  that  this  classification  is  only  ap- 
proximative— of  two  such  organs,  for  instance, 
as  the  spleen  and  pancreas,  it  is  impossible  to  say 
which  is  the  better  supplied.  It  will  be  seen  as 
we  go  on  that  this  classification,  although  imper- 
fect, is  somewhat  important  in  view  of  the  de- 
ductions which  we  shall  be  able  to  draw  from  it. 

At  the  head  of  the  list,  beyond  all  question, 
stands  the  heart ;  for  it  not  only  receives  the  six 
cardiac  nerves  from  the  upper,  middle,  and  in- 
ferior cervical  ganglia,  and  has  four  plexuses — 
the  two  cardiac  and  two  coronary — entirely  de- 
voted to  its  supply,  but  it  has  also  numerous 
ganglia  imbedded  in  its  substance,  which  are  cen- 
tres of  nerve  force  for  its  own  use,  over  and  above. 
Next  to  the  heart  come  the  suprarenal  capsules. 


PHYSICAL    BASIS    OF    THE   MORAL    NATURE.      51 


In  the  third  rank  stand,  I  think,  the  sexual  or- 
gans, both  male  and  female,  the  testes  and  ovaries 
being  especially  well  supplied.  The.  organs  of 
special  sense  come  next — the  eye,  the  internal 
ear,  the  nasal  mucous  membrane,  and  the  palate. 
Next  after  these  organs  must  be  placed  the 
stomach,  the  whole  intestinal  tract,  and  the  liver. 
In  the  sixth  rank  stand  the  thyroid  gland,  kid- 
neys, spleen,  and  pancreas.  Then  come  the 
lungs,  which  receive  in  proportion  to  their  size 
a  remarkably  small  supply. 

There  is  just  one  thing  more  to  say  about  the 
anatomy  of  our  subject  before  proceeding  to  its 
physiology,  and  that  is,  to  indicate  a  list  of  organs 
supplied  by  the  sympathetic  and  not  by  the  cere- 
bro-spinal  nervous  system.  And  it  is  well  to  bear 
in  mind  that  this  division  of  parts  is  not  absolute 
but  relative  ;  for  as  the  sympathetic,  in  all  its  ex- 
tent, probably  has  cerebro-spinal  fibres  mixed 
with  it,  so  all  parts  which  are  supplied  with  nerves 
by  it  no  doubt  do  receive  some  filaments  from 
the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  system  ;  but  these 
fibres  are  small  and  few,  and  are  probably  also 
modified  in  their  functions  by  being  so  intimately 
associated  as  they  are  with  sympathetic  nerves 
and  ganglia.  The  division  of  organs,  therefore, 
into  those  supplied  by  both  systems,  and  those 
supplied  by  the  sympathetic  alone,  though  not 
an  absolute  division,  is  still  a  real  one.    In  this  list 


s» 


MAN'S  MORAL   NATURE. 


we  have  the  radiating  fibres  of  the  iris,  the  arte- 
rial coats,  the  liver,  the  kidneys,  the  ovaries,  the 
suprarenal  capsules,  the  pancreas,  and  the  Intesti- 
nal tract  Including  both  muscular  coat  and  glands, 
and  to  this  list,  I  believe,  may  be  fairly  added 
the  body  of  the  bladder  and  that  of  the  uterus. 

Now,  as  to  the  functions  of  the  great  sympa- 
thetic. Most  physiologists  seem  to  consider  that 
the  sympathetic  differs  very  little  In  Its  functions 
from  the  cerebro-splnal  system,  and  that,  at  least 
in  some  respects,  its  functions  are  identical  with 
the  functions  of  this  latter  nervous  system.  There 
are  some  general  considerations  which  make  this 
view  of  the  subject  appear  to  me  unlikely  to  be 
correct.  In  the  first  place,  though  both  nervous 
systems  are  made  up  of  nerve  cells  and  nerve 
fibres,  yet  the  cells  and  fibres  of  the  great  sym- 
pathetic nervous  system  differ  materially  In  struc- 
ture from  the  cells  and  fibres  of  the  cerebro-splnal 
nervous  system,  and  it  can  scarcely  be  supposed 
that  such  difference  in  structure  should  not  be 
manifested  by  some  corresponding  difference  in 
function.  In  the  second  place,  the  great  sympa- 
thetic system.  In  the  arrangement  of  its  parts, 
in  the  great  number  and  extraordinary  diffusion 
of  its  ganglia,  and  In  the  immense  number  and 
great  complexity  of  its  plexuses,  is  too  unlike 
the  cerebro-splnal  nervous  system  for  us  to  sup- 
pose that  their  functions  can   be   anything  like 


PHYSICAL    BASIS   OF    THE    MORAL    NATURE. 


53 


identical.  Thirdly,  the  great  sympathetic  is  dis- 
tributed mainly  to  organs  In  the  interior  of  the 
body  that  do  not  require  and  are  not  endowed 
with  sensibility — at  all  events  to  anything  like 
the  same  degree  as  obtains  In  the  case  of  the 
external  organs  which  are  supplied  with  nerves 
by  the  cerebro-splnal  nervous  system.  And  last- 
ly, if  the  great  sympathetic  has  the  power  of 
exciting  contractility  in  muscles  at  all,  we  shall 
see  that  this  power  is  materially  different  from 
that  possessed  by  the  motor  centres  of  the  cere- 
bro-spinal  system. 

Whac,  then,  are  the  functions  of  the  sympa- 
thetic nervous  system  ? 

I  shall  consider  this  subject  by  seeking  to  give 
rational  answers,  deduced  from  acknowledged 
facts,  to  the  following  five  questions  : 

First :  Is  it  a  motor  nervous  system  ;  and  if 
so,  in  what  sense  ? 

Second  :  Is  it  endowed  with  sensatloh  ? 

Third  ;  Does  it  control  the  functions  of  the 
secreting  glands,  as  the  gastric,  mammary,  intes- 
tinal, salivary,  lachrymal,  the  liver,  kidneys,  and 
pancreas  ? 

Fourth  :  Does  it  Influence  the  general  nutrition 
of  the  body  ;  and  If  so,  in  what  manner  ? 

Fifth  :  Is  it  the  nervous  centre  of  the  moral 
nature? 

Let  us  discuss  these  questions  in  their  order.  ^ 


54 


MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 


I.  The  first  question  is  :  Does  the  sympathetic 
possess  the  functions  of  a  motor  nerve  ?  The 
only  muscular  structures  which  receive  nerves 
from  the  sympathetic  and  none  from  the  cerebro- 
spinal nervous  system  are  the  muscular  coats  of 
the  arteries,  the  radiating  fibres  of  the  iris,  and 
the  muscular  coat  of  the  intestines.  It  would  be 
almost  though  not  absolutely  correct  to  include 
in  this  list  the  bladder  and  uterus.  Any  nervous 
stimulation  received  by  these  organs  must,  there- 
fore, be  sent  from  the  great  sympathetic,  and  that 
these  structures  are  influenced  by  some  nervous 
system  Is  certain,  as  we  shall  see  farther  on.  We 
may,  therefore,  say  positively  that  the  great 
sympathetic  does  act  as  a  nerve  of  motion.  It  is 
to  be  remarked,  however,  that  all  these  structures 
are  made  up  of  unstrlped  muscular  fibre  ;  and 
also  that  all  unstrlped  muscle,  whether  it  receive 
any  nerves  from  the  cerebro-splnal  nervous  sys- 
tem or  not.  Is  well  supplied  by  the  great  sympa- 
thetic. We  shall  be  safe  If  we  Infer  from  these 
facts  that  the  great  sympathetic  is  the  nerve  of 
motion  to  unstrlped  muscle.  In  the  case  of  the 
heart,  whose  muscular  fibres  are  striped,  though 
they  are  not  precisely  similar  to  ordinary  striped 
muscle  such  as  is  supplied  by  the  cerebro-splnal 
system  and  Is  uider  the  control  of  the  will,  there 
seems  no  room  to  doubt  that  Its  movements  are 
influenced  by  the  great  sympathetic.     And  this 


PHYSICAL    BASIS    OF    THE    MORAL    NATURE. 


55 


must  be  taken  as  a  partial  exception  to  what  I 
believe  to  be  the  law,  namely :  that  the  move- 
ments of  striped  muscle  are  controlled  by  the 
cerebro-splnal  nervous  system,  and  the  move- 
ments of  unstriped  muscle  by  the  great  sympa- 
thetic. The  only  other  exception  to  this  law 
that  I  am  aware  of  is  the  case  of  the  circular 
fibres  of  the  iris,  which,  being  unstriped  muscle, 
are  supplied  by  the  third  cranial  nerve. 

II.  If  the  same  reasoning  be  applied  to  the  solu- 
tion of  the  question  :  Is  the  great  sympathetic  a 
sensory  nerve  ?  we  do  not  get  a  very  clear  answer. 
Parts  supplied  only  by  the  great  sympathetic,  as 
the  liver,  kidneys,  pancreas,  suprarenal  capsules, 
and  ovaries,  are  probably  very  lutle  if  at  all  sensi- 
tive. Arofuments  as  to  the  sensitiveness  of  these 
organs  drawn  from  pathological  conditions  I  do 
not  think  of  much  value,  for  such  pathological' 
states  usually  involve  the  investing  membrane  of 
these  organs  cither  by  congestion  of  it,  stretching 
of  it,  or  in  some  other  way,  and  it  is  known  that 
this  investing  membrane,  the  peritoneum,  is  well 
supplied  by  cerebro-spinal  nerves,  and  is  very 
sensitive.  On  the  other  hand,  pathological  con- 
ditions of  these  organs  which  do  not  interfere 
with  their  investing  membrane — such  as  cancer  of 
the  liver,  in  cases  where  all  the  cancerous  nodules 
are  buried  in  the  substance  of  the  organ  and  do 
not  encroach  upon  the  peritoneum — and  many 


56  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

diseases,  both  of  the  liver  and  kidneys,  leading  to 
fatal  disintegration  of  tissue,  are  quite  painless. 
The  organs  which  have  been  mentioned  as  being 
supplied  solely  by  great  sympathetic  nerves  are, 
by  their  position,  well  protected,  both  by  being 
surrounded  by  sensitive  tissues  and  organs,  and 
by  being  Invested  by  a  highly  sensitive  mem- 
brane. They  do  not,  therefore,  require  for  their 
protection  that  they  themselves  should  be  sensi- 
tive, and  I  do  not  believe  that  they  are  so.  An- 
other fact  which  bears  out  this  view  remains  to 
be  mentioned.  When  organs  analogous  to  those 
of  which  we  have  been  speaking — that  is,  other 
glands,  such  as  the  mammary,  salivary,  or  testes 
— are  placed  In  exposed  situations,  they  are 
then  supplied  with  cerebro -spinal  nerves  as 
well  as  with  nerves  from  the  sympathetic  ;  the 
sympathetic  fibres  being  undoubtedly  intended 
to  control  their  functions,  and  the  cerebro-spinal 
fibres  to  make  them  sensitive  and  so  protect 
them  from  Injury.  For  if,  on  the  one  hand, 
the  great  sympathetic  fibres  were  endowed  with 
sensibility,  there  would  be  no  occasion  for  a 
supply  of  cerebro-spinal  nerves  to  these  organs ; 
or  if,  on  the  other  hand,  the  cerebro-spinal 
nerves  are  not  sent  to  furnish  them  with  sensi- 
bility, but  to  control,  as  some  physiologists 
maintain,  their  secreting  functions,  then  there 
would  be  no  apparent  reason  why  they  should 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL  NATURE.        57 

be  supplied  with  great  sympathetic  nerves.  All 
things  considered,  therefore,  I  am  inclined  to 
answer  this  question  in  the  negative.  I  do  not 
believe  that  the  great  sympathetic  is  endowed 
with  sensation.  Of  course  I  do  not  mean  that 
the  great  sympathetic  has  not  afferent  as  well 
as  efferent  fibres — it  doubtless  has  ;  but  what  I 
argue  is,  that  an  afferent  impulse  along  these 
fibres,  although  it  may  and  does  awake  a  response 
in  the  corresponding  ganglion,  does  not  awaken 
sensation. 

III.  The  third  question  is :  Does  the  great  sym- 
pathetic exercise  a  controlling  Influence  over  the 
functions  of  the  secreting  glands  ?  I  think  there 
need  be  no  hesitation  about  answering  this  ques- 
tion in  the  afftrmatlve.  The  ordinary  functions  of 
these  glands  might  be  supposed  to  be  carried  on 
independently  of  nervous  influence  altogether, 
although  I  do  not  think  It  at  all  likely  that  they 
are ;  for,  as  in  the  healthy  condition  of  the  body 
the  secreting  process  of  every  gland  Is  carried  on 
with  reference  to  other  parts  besides  Itself,  so 
there  seems  no  means  by  which  the  function  of  a 
given  gland  could  be  coordinated  to  the  condi- 
tion of  other  parts  of  the  economy  except  through 
the  agency  of  a  nervous  system  distributed  to 
each,  and  through  which  a  chain  of  intelligence 
— If  we  may  use  that  word — Is  maintained.     If 

any  nervous  system  performs  the  office  here  in- 
3* 


jS  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

dicated,  It  must,  of  necessity,  be  the  great  sympa- 
thetic, for  the  following  reasons  : — The  will  has 
no  influence  upon  the  functions  of  the  secreting 
glands.  In  cases  of  general  paralysis  from  dis- 
ease or  Injury  of  the  cord  the  functions  of  the  se- 
creting glands  are  performed  almost  If  not  quite 
as  well  as  when  the  cerebro-splnal  system  Is  in- 
tact. The  great  sympathetic  Is  the  only  nervous 
system  which  Is  distributed  to  all  the  glands,  the 
liver  and  kidneys  receiving  nerves  from  no  other. 
As  for  the  cases  of  extraordinary  action,  or  ar- 
rest of  action,  of  these  glands  in  some  emotional 
states,  as,  for  example,  the  excessive  secretion  of 
urine  In  fear,  of  tears  In  grief,  and  conversely, 
the  arrest  of  the  buccal  and  salivary  secretions 
in  terror,  the  arrest  of  the  gastric  secretion  from 
almost  any  marked  emotional  excitement,  the 
well-known  Increase,  arrest,  and  alteration  in  quali- 
ty of  the  mammary  secretion  from  the  influence 
of  maternal  love,  terror,  and  rage  ;  these  cannot 
be  explained  without  referring  them  to  the  In- 
fluence of  some  nervous  system  over  the  glands 
in  question.  I  think,  for  the  following  reasons, 
that  this  nervous  system  is  the  sympathetic  : — In 
the  first  place,  some  of  these  glands,  as  the  kid- 
neys, receive  no  other  than  sympathetic  nerves  ; 
and,  in  the  second  place,  the  great  sympathetic 
sends  a  liberal  supply  of  nerves  to  all  of  them. 
It   sends   nerves   to  those  glands  which  receive 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL  NATURE. 


59 


cerebro-spinal  nerves,  as  well  as  to  those  which 
do  not ;  and  if  reference  be  made  to  an  attempted 
classification  on  a  previous  page  of  this  book, 
it  will  be  seen  that  there  the  kidneys,  which  re- 
ceive no  nerves  but  from  the  great  sympathetic, 
rank  in  the  sixth  order  of  organs  according  to  the 
quantity  of  sympathetic  nerves  which  they  receive. 
The  testes,  ovaries,  the  gastric  and  intestinal 
glands,  all  come  before  the  kidneys  as  receiving 
more  sympathetic  nerves  than  do  these.  Of  these 
organs  the  ovaries,  suprarenal  capsules,  and  liver 
receive  no  cerebro-spinal  nerves,  but  the  other 
organs  all  do,  and  some  of  them,  as  the  testes  and 
gastric  glands,  receive  a  tolerably  large  supply  of 
nerves  from  this  system.  If,  then,  some  secreting 
organs  are  certainly  influenced  by  emotional  states 
through  the  medium  of  the  sympathetic,  and  if 
the  great  sympathetic  is  supplied  just  as  copiously, 
or  more  so,  to  other  organs  whose  functions  are 
also  influenced  by  emotional  states,  is  it  not 
reasonable  to  conclude  that  the  medium  is  the 
same  in  all  cases,  and  that  it  is  through  the  great 
sympathetic  that  emotional  conditions  affect  the 
secretions  ? 

But  this  is  not  all.  We  have  seen  above  that 
it  is  a  strict  rule  that  secreting  glands  are  sup- 
plied with  cerebro-spinal  nerves  copiously,  or  the 
reverse,  according  to  the  degree  of  their  exposure 
to  injury  from  without ;   thus  the  salivary  and 


6o  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

mammary  glands  are  well  supplied,  while  the 
kidneys  and  liver  receive  no  cerebro-spinal  fibres 
at  all.  So  too,  the  testes  are  supplied  with 
cerebro-spinal  nerves,  while  the  homologous  or- 
gans in  the  female — the  ovaries — are  not.  So 
that,  on  the  one  hand,  without  supposing  that 
the  cerebro-spinal  nerves  going  to  these  organs 
have  anything  to  do  with  their  functions,  we  can 
understand  why  they  are  sent  to  them  ;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  we  have  shown  that  they  are  not 
heeded  to  explain  the  functional  phenomena  of 
these  organs,  for  these  are  the  same  In  glands 
which  are,  and  in  those  which  are  not,  supplied 
with  cerebro-spinal  fibres. 

But  there  is  still  another  word  to  say  in  support 
of  this  view,  and  it  is  this — cerebro-spinal  nerves 
are  either  nerves  of  sensation  or  nerves  of  motion. 
Now,  in  the  case,  for  instance,  of  the  mammary 
glands,  which  are  supplied  with  cerebro-spinal 
nerves  derived  from  the  anterior  and  lateral  cuta- 
neous nerves  of  the  thorax,  those  branches  which 
are  distributed  to  the  mammary  glands  are  either 
sensory  or  motor  nerves.  Now,  if  we  suppose  that 
these  nerves  control  the  secreting  functions  of  the 
glands,  we  must  either  suppose  that  a  motor  nerve 
is  able  to  take  on  this  function,  which  does  not 
seem  likely,  or  we  must  suppose  that  it  is  accom- 
plished by  a  sensory  nerve  ;  and  in  that  case  we 
must  argue  that  the  nerves  in  question  are  capable 


f 


■r" 


n^^ 


J>u       .. 


a   cf/^uJ  h   jNfJ-mmtttfff    f.-^.^ffi    "    ,       .///    P/iysio/o<^ry^'* 


gg  MAM'^   nrnvir     T^TArr^m 


-.  m'c  >vtM  ^iij^pUcci,  while  the 
'..;  no  corebro-spinal  fibres 

/.  :•><>  too,  the  testes  are  siippUecl  witli 
> «  rebro--i  inal  ner/es.  while  the  homologous  or- 
o-ans  in  the  female — the  ovaries — are  not.  So 
that,  on  the  one  hand,  without  supposing  that 
the  cercbro-spinal  nerves  going  to  these  or<:aniS 
have  anyrhliv^r  to  do  wi'h  their  functions,  we  can 
undersiaivJ  v^h\  tlu'-  .\>  ■  m  ri  to  them;  and,  on 
rh'    olh' r  irin<-    v,-    '.;).f    -  ?'»,■«  i:^   \    •)?  •  not 

V    ♦•>  .     :         .  ;.«    of 


^-■■ 


{'..inds 
j.>  plied 


I'lal  U'-y."f:  >      ier  word  to  say  in  support 

CM  this  v-  w,  and  it  is  this — cerebro-spinal  nerves 
are  either  nerves  of  s(Misation  or  nervr^s  of  motion. 
Now,  in  the  case,  for  instance,  of  the  marnmary 
glands,  which  are  siq^plied  with  cerebro-spinal 
nerves  deri\  ed  from  the  anterior  and  lauM'al  cuta- 
neous nerves  of  the  tliorax,  those  branches  which 
r«r«-  distributed  to  the  mammary  glands  are  either 
•*\'  or  motur  nerves.  Now,  if  we  suppose  that 
th  .  1  vrs  control  rh.  -vpn-  rn- r  fi- actions  uf  the 
glanr        .  :  .  ^  mcjior  ner\'c 

is  '•''  a:a,  which  does  not 

se-  ose  that  it  is  accom- 

^ '  and  in  that  case  we 

mus.  at  til  in  question  are  capable 


(HJIUNK   OK    TIIK    CKKKIJKO- 

SPINAI.    NERVOUS    SYSTEM. 

Page  60 


This  cut  is   copied  by  permission  from    ''human   Physio 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MO  KM.   NATURE.       6 1 


of  carryinij^  tlic  current  wliich  has  this  influence  on 
the  jj^land  the  reverse  way  to  its  ordinary  use,  for 
the  current  in  a  sensory  nerve  (lows  from  the  i)cri- 
phery  to  tlie  centre,  Init  this  current  of  nervous 
influence,  of  which  tliere  is  now  ([uestion,  flows 
alouL^  the  nerve  from  the  centre  to  the  periphery. 

If  these  consi(l(;rations  are  carefully  weighed  they 
will  be  seen  to  hear  out  the  following  propositions: 
That  the  threat  sympathetic  can  and  does  exercise  a 
controlling  influence  over  the  functions  of  some  of 
the  secreting  glands,  such  as  the  kidiK^ys,  which  re- 
ceive no  other  nerves.  That,  as  it  is  at  least  cicjually 
distributed  to  other  'dands  which  receive  cerebro- 
si)inal  n(M'ves,  and  no  other  function  ai)pears  for  it 
to  perform,  it  infhu^nces  their  secreting  functions 
also.  That  cerebro-s[)inal  nerv(;s  when  sent  to 
glands  have  another  obvious  function  to  perform 
besides  that  of  controlling  the  secretions  of  these 
glands  ;  and  that  it  is,  consequendy,  unnecessary 
to  su[)pos(;  that  they  perform  this  function  also. 
And,  fmally,  it  does  not  seem  likely,  for  other 
reasons,  that  the  nerves  derived  from  the  ccTcbro- 
splnal  system  can  or  do  influence  the  functions  of 
secr(!ting  organs. 

IV.  The  fourth  cpiestion  is  :  Docs  tlu;  great  sym- 
pathetic influence  the  general  nutrition  of  the  body  ; 
and  if  so,  in  what  manner  ?  The  nervous  power 
which  controls  nutrition  must  Ix;  universal,  since 
nutrition  itself  is  universal.  The  great  sym[)athetic 


62  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

nerve  is  (lislrll)utc(l  to  the  wliolc  system,  wliile 
many  parts  are  not  sii))plie{l  hy  tlie  cerel)ro-spinal 
system.  I'Or  all  cranial  and  si)Inal  nerves  receive 
branches  from  the  sympathetic  which  are  undouht- 
edly  distributed,  at  least  in  part,  with  the  spinal 
and  cranial  nerves.  Also,  all  arteries  are  acc(jni- 
panied  l)y  sympathetic  nerves  which  are  distributed 
to  the  same  parts  as  the  arteries.  Besides  this 
there  are,  without  any  doubt,  as  point(ul  out  by 
Davy,  in  his  work  on  the  great  sympatlulic,  hun- 
dreds of  minute  symi)athetic  i^^ani^dia  scattered 
amoni^  th(i  tissues  and  ori^^ans  of  the  body  which 
send  filanuMUs  to  the;  parts  in  the  neii^hhorhood  of 
each  of  tlu:m,so  that,  ip  fact,  the  distribution  of  the 
great  sympathetic  system  is  absolutely  universal, 
while  the  distribution  of  the  cerebro-spinal  sys- 
tem is  far  from  l)eing  so.  The  nutrition  of  para- 
lyzed limbs,  though  not  up  to  par  on  account  of 
want  of  exercise,  is  still  pretty  well  kept  up  ;  while 
if  those  limbs  could  Ixi  deprived  of  sympathetic 
nervous  influence;  instead  of  cerel)r()-s[)inal  nervous 
influence:  then;  is  reason  to  belic;ve  that  their  nutri- 
tion would  fail  aljsolutely.and  that  they  would  die. 
If  th(;  sympathetic  be  divided  on  one  side;  of  the 
neck,  the  immediate  effc;cts  of  the:  operation  are  as 
follows  :  The  corres[)onding  side  of  the  head  and 
face  is  immediately  very  much  congested,  ;uul  the 
temperature  of  the  same  parts  rises  as  much  as 
six,  eight,  or  ten  degrees.     The  meaning  of  these 


rilYSTCAI.   BASIS  OF    TIfE   MORAL   I^ATURE.        63 

clKinecs  would  seem  to  1)C  that  \\\v.  muscular  coats 
of  the  arteries  are  paralyzed  hy  division  of  the 
nerve  which  supjjlies  them,  and  that  oxidation  of 
the  tissues  takes  place  too  rapidl}'.  Whc:ther  oxi- 
dation of  the  tissues  is  hasteiK^d  in  consequ(;nce  of 
the  con<^(jstion  which  is  du(;  to  the  paralysis  (;f  the 
muscular  coats  of  the  arteries,  or  whether  it  is  due 
to  a  direct  loss  of  nervous  energy  supplied  by  the 
syni[)athctic  to  the  tissues  th(;msc:lves,  and  by 
virtu(;  of  which  retroi^rade  metamorphosis  is,  in 
the  normal  state  of  the  parts,  held  in  check,  or 
what  part  of  the  extra  oxidation  and  consecpient 
el( ovation  of  tem[)erature  is  due  to  each  of  these 
causes,  canncA,  perhaps,  be  absolutely  determined 
in  the  present  state  of  our  knovvledj^a!.  It  is  in 
any  case  undoubtedly  true  that,  either  directly  or 
indirecdy,  the  ^n'eat  sympathdic  exercisc;s  a  con- 
trolling^ influenct;  over  that  [)r()cess  of  cell  growth 
and  destruction  which  we  call  nutrition.  To  w'^it 
extent  the  process  of  nutrition  is  dependent  uix^n 
a  sui)ply  of  nerve  force  d(!rived  from  tin;  sjnipa- 
th(!tic  is  a  more  difficult  matter  to  decide;.  Wc; 
know  that  this  ])rocess  goes  on  in  plants,  and  in 
animals  too  low  in  the  scalt;  to  have  a  sympathetic 
system,  though  Davy  believes  that  all  animals 
have  a  sympathetic  system,  and  that  even  plants 
have  an  analogous  organ  ;  but,  supposing  that  the 
ordinary  view  is  correct,  and  that  ncidicr  plants 
nor  animals  very  lov/  in  the  scale  have  a  sympa- 


^4  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

thctic  system,  then  it  would  seem  thai  the  process 
of  nutrition  cannot  be  entirely  dependent  upon  any 
kind  of  nervous  influence.  But  in  that  case  it 
would  appear  that,  while  going  on  under  the  gen- 
eral laws  of  chemico-vital  selection  and  of  cell 
growth  and  destruction  which  arc  common  to  all 
organized  beings,  the  highest  as  well  as  the  lowest, 
to  plants  as  well  as  to  animals,  nutrition  is  still 
subject  to  what  wc  may  call  a  general  supervision 
of  the  great  sympathetic  system. 

V.  The  last  question  which  we  have  to  answer  in 
regard  to  the  functions  of  the  great  sympathetic, 
is  :  Is  it  the  nervous  centre  of  the  moral  nature  1 
I  believe  it  is. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  in  the  previous  chapter 
that  there  are  several  reasons  for  supposing  that 
the  moral  nature  and  the  intellectual  are  really 
distinct  functions,  or  rather  groups  of  functions. 
These  arguments,  duly  considered,  will  be  found  to 
be  entitled  to  a  certain  weight  in  relation  to  the 
question  now  to  be  considered  ;  for,  if  these  two 
groups  of  functions  are  really  distinct,  it  becomes 
probable  th^.c  the  organs  of  which  they  are  func- 
tions are  also  distinct.  Let  us  suppose  this  to  be 
the  case ;  let  us  also  suppose  that  the  higher  cere- 
bral ganglia  are  the  physical  basis  of  the  intellec- 
tual nature  ;  and  now  let  us  see  if  we  can  find  any 
other  organ  of  which  the  moral  nature  may  be 
reasonably  supposed  to  be  the  function. 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL  NATURE.        65 

There  are  some  general  considerations  which 
arc  calculated  to  raise  a  presumptio:  a  an  un- 
biased mind  that  there  may  be  a  closer  connection 
than  is  usually  supposed  between  the  great  sym- 
pathetic and  the  emotional  nature. 

1.  In  the  first  place,  we  feel  that  our  emotions 
have  their  seat,  not  in  our  heads,  but  in  our 
bodies;  and  the  languages  of  all  nations  and  of  all 
times  refer  the  emotions  to  the  heart,  in  and  about 
which  organ  are  grouped  the  larger  ganglionic 
masses  of  the  great  sympathetic  system. 

2.  In  the  second  place,  the  intellect  is  less  devel- 
oped and  the  moral  nature  more  developed,  in 
proportion  to  her  whole  mental  volume,  in  woman 
than  in  man,  and  we  know  that  the  brain  is  smaller, 
and  we  have  reason  to  think  that  the  great  sym- 
pathetic is  larger,  relatively  to  her  size,  in  the 
female  than  in  the  male  of  our  species.  I  do  not 
think  a  comparison  has  ever  been  made  by  direct 
observation  between  the  great  sympathetic  in  man 
and  tlu!  same  onj^an  in  woman,  but  it  has  two  larp^e 
organs  to  supply  in  the  female  which  do  not  exist 
in  the  male,  viz. :  the  mammary  glands  and  the 
uterus.  It  is  certain,  therefore,  that  the  organ  is 
larger  in  the  female  by  that  much  at  least. 

3.  In  the  third  place,  there  is  the  fact  that  all  the 
functions  which  we  know  of,  as  belonLrinLr  without 
question  to  the  great  sympathetic,  are  what  we  may 
call  by  comparison  with  the  functions  of  the  cere- 


66  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

bro-spinal  nervous  system  continuous  functions — 
for  example  :  the  control  of  the  calibre  of  the  ar- 
terial walls,  the  slow  and  almost  constant  peristaltic 
action  of  the  bowels,  the  regulation  of  secretion 
and  nutrition  ;  while  all  the  functions  of  the  cere- 
bro-spinal  nervous  system  might  be  called,  by  con- 
trast, in^^^antaneous  functions — the  reception  of 
sense  impressions,  the  act  of  thought,  the  contrac- 
tion of  a  voluntary  muscle,  or  a  group  of  voluntary 
muscles — these  functions  are  scarcely  begun  before 
they  are  ended.  Now,  it  is  easy  to  see  into  which 
of  these  groups  emotions  naturally  fall.  We  do  not 
love  for  an  instant,  as  we  think  of  an  algebraic 
equation  or  of  a  point  in  a  business  transaction, 
and  then  cease  for  a  time,  or  altogether,  to  love  ; 
on  the  contrary,  we  love  for  hours,  days,  or  weeks, 
continuously.  So  with  hate.  Though  we  do  not 
hate,  most  of  us,  fortunately,  quite  as  persistently 
as  we  love,  still  we  seldom  hate  for  a  few  seconds 
or  even  minutes  only  ;  we  are  apt  to  keep  it  up  for 
hours,  perhaps  days.  Faith,  I  consider  to  be,  with 
love,  the  highest  function  of  the  moral  nature.  I 
do  not  mean  anything  like  belief,  when  I  say  faith  ; 
belief  belongs  to  the  intellect — is  a  part  of  the  in- 
tellectual nature.  The  moral  function,  faith  (see  p. 
23  ^^  seq.)y  is  something  that  includes  reliance,  con- 
fidence, and  courage,  and  when  it  is  possessed  in  a 
large  measure,  and  carried  into  matters  of  religion, 
the  person  possessing  it  is  safe  from  at  least  half 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL  NATURE.       67 

the  Ills  of  mortality.  Without  encroaching  upon 
the  domain  of  the  theologian  we  may  say  in  a  true 
sense  that  such  a  man  Is  saved.  This  faith,  like 
love,  is  continuous  for  days,  weeks,  or  months. 

Look,  now,  at  the  more  momentary  passions, 
such  as  anger  or  fear.  We  know  that  to  become 
angry  takes  an  appreciable  length  of  time,  some 
seconds,  minutes,  or  even  hours,  according  to  the 
degree  of  mobility  of  the  individual  nervous  sys- 
tem acted  upon,  and  according  to  the  nature  of  the 
exciting  cause  of  the  anger,  and  that  when  the 
passion  is  fully  aroused  it  continues  for  some  time, 
sometimes  for  days,  and  then  passes  off  slowly  as  it 
arises.  The  same  may  be  said  of  fear.  It  Is  well 
known  that  after  a  great  danger  has  been  passed, 
fear  will  often  last  for  days,  and  even  weeks,  and 
fear  Is  never  momentary. 

4.  A  fourth  consideration  which  argues  a  connec- 
tion between  the  moral  nature  and  the  great  sym- 
pathetic nervous  system  Is  what  we  may  call  the 
depth  of  both  the  one  and  the  other.  The  great 
sympathetic  Is  anatomically  deep  ;  it  is  buried  out 
of  sight ;  It  does  not  come  to  the  surface  at  any 
point ;  it  has  no  direct  connection,  as  far  as  wc 
know,  with  the  outside  world.  You  know  that  In 
this  respect  It  is  In  strong  contrast  with  the  cere- 
bro-spinal  nervous  system,  to  which  belong  all  the 
nerves  of  general  and  special  sense,  and  which 
supplies  all  the  muscles  whose  movements  are  visi- 


68  MAN'S  MORAL  NA  TURE. 

ble  on  the  surface,  as  well  as  the  vocal  orofan.  The 
great  sympathetic  has  no  such  connections  with 
the  outside  world  at  all  ;  no  sense  orcrans,  and  no 
voluntary  muscles  belong  to  it ;  it  has  no  vocal 
organ.  Now,  how  does  the  great  sympathetic 
compare  in  these  respects  with  the  moral  nature  ? 
I  say  it  tallies  exactly  with  this  latter.  For  who- 
ever will  consider  a  moment  will  see  that  we  can 
neither  receive  nor  transmit  moral  impressions  di- 
rectly as  we  can  thoughts.  Wg  can  only  receive 
moral  impressions  by  their  spontaneous  growth 
within  us,  as  most  often  is  the  case  with  love  or 
faith  ;  or  if  we  acquire  them  in  a  more  casual  man- 
ner, we  get  them  through  intellectual  changes — 
for  example  :  we  see  and  realize  a  danger  and  we 
have  fear  ;  we  perceive  an  insult  and  we  become 
angry.  The  intellectual  movem».,nt  must  precede 
the  emotional  movement.  The  emotional  life  is 
under  the  intellectual  ;  as  I  said  at  first  it  is  deeper. 
Now,  as  with  receiving,  so  with  transmitting  or 
expressing  emotional  states.  I  can  tell  you  that  I 
am  afraid  or  that  I  love.  This,  however,  would 
not  be  an  expression  of  an  emotion.  This  would 
be  only  an  issue  of  intellectual  paper  intended  to 
represent  emotional  gold,  which  last  never  leaves 
the  vault  of  the  bank.  It  is  true  to  a  very  large  ex- 
tent that  we  cannot  express  our  emotions.  We  all 
feel  and  know  this  in  every-day  life.  I  said  just  now 
that  the  great  sympathetic  has  no  vocal  organ.    So, 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL  NATURE.       69 

too,  the  moral  nature  was  born  dumb.  If  we  do 
attempt  to  express  an  emotional  state,  we  take 
roundeibout  or  special  ways  to  do  it.  For  exam- 
ple :  if  I  were  very  angry  and  wished  to  show  it, 
or,  perhaps,  was  compelled  by  my  passion  to  show 
it  without  wishing  it,  I  should  do  so  by  speaking 
in  a  loud  voice,  in  a  peculiar  tone,  by  gesticulations, 
and  by  facial  expressions;  and  even  then,  with  all 
this  fuss,  I  should  not  express  my  moral  state  as 
clearly  and  fully  as  I  could  express  any  given  in- 
tellectual state  by  means  of  a  few  calm  words. 

5.  A  fifth  general  consideration  Is  the  simplicity 
of  structure  of  moral  states  as  compared  with  con- 
cepts. For  a  simple  moral  state,  such  as  love  or 
fear,  unassociated  with  any  idea,  seems  to  be  ab- 
solutely homogeneous,  while  (as  said  above,  p. 
18  ct  scq.)  concepts,  the  simplest  of  them  that  wc 
can  reach  by  our  best  efforts  of  analysis,  such  as 
the  idea  of  time,  space,  size,  are  undoubtedly 
extremely  complex,  being  built  up  of  elements 
which  do  not  singly  enter  into  consciousness,  just 
as  any  piece  of  matter — a  grain  of  sand  for  in- 
stance— is  an  exceedingly  complex  body,  the  ulti- 
mate atoms  of  which  do  not  form  objects  of 
sense.  Not  only  is  this  true,  but  the  concepts  in 
ordinary  use  are  enormously  complex,  taking  such 
concepts  as  those  just  mentioned  as  the  unit  of 
comparison.  To  make  this  clear,  let  us  compare  a 
simple  moral  state  with  an  ordinary  concept.     A 


70 


MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 


mother  loves  her  child.  We  have  here  a  moral 
state — love — and  a  concept — the  idea  of  the  child  ; 
the  union  of  these  two  makes  the  whole  mental 
state  which  we  are  to  consider.  Now,  I  defy  you 
to  decom[)Ose  love.  It  is,  I  am  satisfied,  absolutely 
homog'eneous.  lUit  look  at  the  conce[)t — child. 
To  form  this  mental  imaiji'e,  an  idea,  shadowy,  per- 
haps, but  real,  must  be  formed  of  each  visible 
part  of  the  child's  body — legs,  arms,  neck,  fea- 
tures, hair  ;  and  each  of  these  concepts  is  made  up 
of  others — size,  texture,  shape,  hardness  or  soft- 
ness. Multiply  one  of  these  by  the  other  and  you 
have  an  immense  numbc^r  of  concepts,  which  yet, 
perhaps,  are  not  simjole,  but  which  would  admit  of 
still  further  analysis.  And  besides  these  there  are 
numerous  other  concepts  necessary  to  make;  up  the 
concept,  child — such  as  its  dress,  age,  habits,  man- 
ner, speech,  history,  and  each  of  these  are,  in  their 
turn,  highly  compound  concepts  ;  so  that  it  would 
not  be  difficult  to  show  that  in  that  one  concept — 
child — there  enter  hundreds  of  simi)ler  concepts  ; 
and  I  Ijelieve  that  not  one  lut  of  all  those  hun- 
dreds could  be  shown  to  be  an  absolutely  simple 
concept.  Now,  the  structure  of  the  brain  is  infi- 
nitely more  com[)l(;x  than  the  structure  of  the  great 
sympath(;tic  ;  so  that  the  simplicity  of  moral  states, 
compared  with  int(dlectual  states,  finds  its  parallel 
in  the  organs  of  which  we  sui)pose  these  two  re- 
spectively  to   be  functions.     This   parallel   holds 


PITYSTCAL   nASrS  OF   TITF.   MORAL  NATURE. 


71 


good  in  the  other  functions  of  these  two  nervous 
systems,  but  it  is  unnecessary  to  follow  it  out  in 
detail  in  this  place.  But,  consider  for  a  moment, 
the  imnuMise  number  of  sounds  that  the  ear  of  a 
trained  musician  can  receive  and  recognize  at  the 
same  time,  or  the  enormous  number  of  objects  that 
the  eye  can  take  cog^nizance  of  at  once  ;  consider 
the  complexity  of  the  functions  of  coordination  of 
muscular  movement,  as  in  |)layini;-  the  piano  ;  then 
turn  to  the  functions  controlled  by  the  c,^reat  sym- 
pathetic, such  as  secretion  and  nutrition,  and  see 
how  homo<^eneous  they  are  as  compared  with 
these  functions  of  the  cerebro-spinal  syst(;m. 

6.  In  the  sixth  place,  l(jt  us  consider  what  I  shall 
call  ranj^e  of  intensity.  All  moral  states  have  a 
wide  rani^e  in  degree  of  intensity.  Intc^llectual 
images,  though  they  are  more  vivid  at  times  than 
they  are  at  others,  have  no  true  range  of  degree 
of  intensity.  Now,  all  the  functions  of  the  great 
sympathetic  system  have  this  ca})acity  of  varying 
in  intensity  well  marked  ;  and  not  only  so,  but  the 
variation  is  very  conunonly  associated  with  varying 
dcfH'ees  of  emotion.  All  the  established  functions 
of  the  great  sympathetic  have  this  property  of 
variation.  The  lachrymal  gland  has  a  certain  rate 
of  secretion,  which  is  sufficient  to  keep  the  eyeball 
moist.  This  rate  is  altered  both  by  diminution  and 
excess — that  is,  in  intensity  of  activity  of  the  func- 
tion, under  the  influence  of  irritants  and  disease, 


72 


MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 


and  especially  under  the  influence  of  emotions,  or 
rather,  it  would  be  more  correct  to  say  synchro- 
nously with  the  existence  of  emotion.  The  same 
thing  is  true  of  the  gastric,  urinary,  intestinal,  and, 
in  fact,  of  all  the  other  secretions — markedly  of 
the  mammary  secretion  and  of  the  secretion  of  the 
testes.  Variation  in  intensity  of  action  of  unstriped 
muscle,  also  synchronously  with  the  existence  of 
strong  emotion,  is  not  less  marked,  as  seen  in  al- 
terations of  the  heart's  action,  in  excess  and  defect 
of  peristaltic  action  of  the  muscular  coats  of  the 
intestines,  and  in  persistent  contraction  of  the 
radiating  fibres  of  the  iris  in  terror  and  the  con- 
tinuous relaxation  of  them  in  rage.  The  sP'^e 
thing  is  true  of  nutrition,  which  has  a  wide  raiige 
of  variation  of  intensity,  and  also  a  general  corre- 
spondence with  the  prevailing  tone  or  state  of  the 
moral  nature  ;  for  during  times  when  nutrition  is 
exceptionally  active,  as  during  the  growth  of  the 
organism,  or  upon  recovery  from  a  disease  which 
has  reduced  the  weight  of  the  organism,  there  is 
exceptional  activity  of  the  moral  nature  ;  and  not 
only  so,  but  at  these  times  the  positive  functions — 
love  and  faith — are  then  especially  active  ;  and 
conversely,  during  the  progress  of  wasting  diseases 
and  during  the  time  that  the  organism  is  decreas- 
ing in  weight  in  old  age,  when  this  decrease  hap- 
pens, the  moral  rature  is  exceptional! v  inactive 
and  the  negative  functions  prevail  over  the  posi- 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL   NATURE. 


n 


tive.  On  the  other  hand,  this  range  of  intensity 
does  not  belono;  to  the  intellect  in  the  same  sense 
at  all.  Mental  images,  as  mentioned  above,  are 
certainly  more  vivid  some  times  than  they  are  at 
others  ;  but  this  is  a  vastly  different  thing  from  the 
immense  range  of  intensity  of  any  one  of  the  pas- 
sions— as  love,  for  instance — which  may  be  merely 
a  slight  liking  for  some  thing,  animal,  or  person, 
or  may  be  so  intense  in  degree  as  to  absorb  into 
itself  every  form  of  energy  belonging  to  the  or- 
ganism. And  as  this  quality  of  range  of  intensity 
does  not  belong  to  the  intellect,  so  neither  does 
it  belong  to  any  other  function  of  the  cerebro- 
spinal system.  The  sense  organs  are  passive  in- 
struments which  merely  receive  what  is  offered 
them.  We  have,  to  be  sure,  a  perception  of  differ- 
ent degrees  of  light  and  color,  different  degrees  of 
taste  and  odor,  different  degrees  of  loudness  of 
sound,  and  different  degrees  of  pain,  but  these  are 
the  reports  of  passive  organs  of  different  degrees 
of  stimulation  from  without,  the  organism,  and  arc 
not  parallel  with  the  different  degrees  of  emotional 
excitement.  The  muscular  system,  too,  stimulated 
by  the  motor  tract  of  the  ccrebro-spinal  nervous 
system,  acts  with  greater  vigor  at  one  time  and 
less  at  another,  the  muscular  contractions  being 
stronger  or  weaker.  But  this  range  of  intensity, 
such  as  it  is,  depends  itself  chiefly  if  not  entirely 
upon  variations  in  the  state  of  the  moral  nature ; 
4 


74  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

for  you  know  that  it  Is  impossible  to  make  an  ex- 
traordinary muscular  effort  unless  there  is  some 
unusual  emotional  condition  behind  the  effort  and 
prompting  it.  And  the  elaborate  intercommuni- 
cation between  the  great  sympathetic  and  the 
motor  tract  of  the  cord  makes  it  quite  clear  to  us 
how  this  connection  between  the  emotional  and 
motor  functions  is  to  be  explained. 

7.  The  seventh  of  these  considerations  which  I 
have  to  urge  is  the  relation  which  subsists  between 
the  size  of  the  organism  and  the  development  of 
the  moral  nature.  I  believe  that,  as  a  rule,  it  is 
true  that  "  small  men  have  small  minds."  Not  but 
that  small  men  have  as  good  intellectual  qualities 
as  full-sized  men,  but  that  they  are  inferior  moral- 
ly. There  are  many  instances  in  the  history  of  the 
race  of  men  of  great,  even  very  great,  intellectual 
power,  who  were  at  the  same  time  under  the  me- 
dium size.  Napoleon,  Wellington,  and  Brougham 
are  examples.  There  are  also  plenty  of  examples 
of  low  intellectual  power  in  large  men.  Buv,  as  far 
as  I  know,  there  has  been  no  example  of  a  m  in  of 
great  moral  elevation — a  religious  founder,  a  su- 
preme artist — who  has  not  been  up  to  the  ordinary 
standard  of  humanity  both  in  height  and  weight. 
On  the  other  hand,  moral  idiots,  of  whom  I  have 
known  several,  that  is,  men  almost  destitute  of  the 
higher,  and  deficient  even  in  the  lower,  moral 
functions  are  always,  as  far  as  my  experience  of 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL  NATURE. 


75 


them  has  gone,  small,  and  often  very  small  men, 
and  the  same  thing  has  been  remarked  by  others. 
It  is  worth  noticing,  in  this  connection,  and  in 
reference  to  the  next  clause  of  the  argument  that 
tall  men  live  longer  than  short  men.  Now,  as 
the  great  sympathetic  undoubtedly  governs  nu- 
trition, and  as  the  brain  has  nothing  to  do  with 
this  function  except  in  a  very  remote  and  indi- 
rect way,  we  can  understand  why  a  good  de- 
velopment of  the  organism  should  accompany  a 
high  moral  nature  if  we  suppose  that  this  is  also 
a  function  of  the  great  sympathetic,  and  why  this 
relation  should  be  wantinof  or  at  least  little  marked 
in  the  case  of  the  intellectual  nature.  But,  if  we 
suppose  that  the  moral  nature  is,  as  well  as  the 
intellectual  nature,  a  function  of  the  same  part  of 
the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  system,  then  I  do  not 
see  how  we  are  to  explain  the  general  fact  set 
forth  in  this  paragraph. 

8.  The  eighth  general  consideration  is,  I  tliink, 
still  more  curious  and  cogent.  It  has  to  do  with 
the  relation  which  subsists  between  moral  eleva- 
tion and  length  of  life.  It  seems  that,  other  things 
being  lual,  those  who  have  the  best  and  highest 
moral  iiatures  live  the  longest.  But,  as  length  of 
life  depends  upon  the  degree  of  perfection  of  the 
great  sympathetic  nervous  system,  it  follows  that 
either  the  moral  nature  is  a  function  of  this  organ 
or  is  related  to  it  in  some  other  intimate  manner. 


76  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

The  argument  is,  first,  other  things  being  equal, 
those  who  have  the  best  and  highest  moral  na- 
tures live  the  longest ;  second,  length  of  life  de- 
pends upon  the  degree  of  perfection  of  the  great 
sympathetic  nervous  system  ;  thirdly,  therefore, 
the  moral  nature  is  a  function  of  the  great  sym- 
pathetic. 

The  first  clause  of  the  argument  is,  those  who 
have  the  best  and  highest  moral  natures  live  the 
longest.  I  shall  support  this  statement  by  four 
facts.  The  first  of  these  four  is  the  extraordinary 
longevity  of  the  Jewish  race,  a  race  which,  to  use 
Richardson's  language,  "  has  not  only  endured 
the  oppression  of  centuries  without  being  lost,  but 
as  it  now  exists,  scattered  here  and  there  over  the 
earth  in  different  countries,  and  among  the  most 
varied  social  and  natural  conditions,  is  of  all  civil- 
ized races  the  first  in  vitality." 

This  point  will  be  found  fully  discussed  in  Rich- 
ardson's last  great  work,  Diseases  of  Modern 
Life,  M.  Neufville  found  that  in  Frankfurt  the 
average  duration  of  the  life  of  the  Jews  was  forty- 
eight  years  and  nine  months,  and  of  the  Christians 
thirty-six  years  and  eleven  months.  The  Civil 
State  Extracts  of  Prussia  give  to  the  Jews  a  mor- 
tality of  I '6 1  per  cent. ;  to  the  whole  kingdom  a 
mortality  of  2*62  per  cent.  Taking  into  considera- 
tion all  the  data  given  by  Richardson  on  this  point, 
I  estimate  that  the  average  life  of  the  Jew  is  at 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  THE  MORAL  NATURE. 


77 


least  six  or  eight  years  longer  than  the  average  life 
of  the  non-Jewish  inhabitants  of  the  various  coun- 
tries in  which  the  Jews  live.  Richardson  says,  on 
on  another  page  of  the  same  work — 

"  Different  causes  have  been  assigned  for  this  higher  vitality  of  the 
Jewish  race,  and  it  were  indeed  wise  to  seek  for  the  causes,  since  that 
race  which  presents  the  strongest  vitality,  the  greatest  increase  of  hfe, 
and  the  longest  resistance  to  death,  must,  in  course  of  time,  become, 
under  the  iniluences  of  civilization,  dominant.  We  see  this  truth,  in- 
deed, actually  exemplified  in  the  Jews ;  for  no  other  known  race  has  ever 
endured  so  much  or  resisted  so  much.  Persecuted,  oppressed  by  every 
imaginable  form  of  tyranny,  they  have  held  together  and  lived,  carrying 
*  on  intact  their  customs,  their  beliefs,  their  faith  for  centuries,  until,  set 
free  at  last,  they  flourish  as  if  endowed  with  new  force.  They  rule  more 
potently  than  ever,  far  more  potently  than  when  Solomon  in  all  his  glory 
reigned  in  Jerusalem.  They  rule,  and  neither  fight  nor  waste.  Happily, 
we  h.ave  not  far  to  go  to  find  many  causes  for  the  high  vitality  of  a  race, 
which,  by  comparison  with  the  Saxon  and  Celtic,  is  physically  feeble. 
The  causes  are  simply  summed  up  in  the  term,  '  soberness  of  life.'  The 
Jew  drinks  less  than  his  'even  Christian;'  he  takes,  as  a  rule,  better 
food  ;  he  marries  earlier  ;  he  rears  the  children  he  has  brought  into  the 
world  with  greater  personal  care  ;  he  tends  the  aged  more  thoughtfully  ; 
he  takes  better  care  of  his  poor,  and  he  lakes  better  care  of  himself.  lie 
does  not  boast  of  to-morrow,  but  he  provides  for  it  ;  and  he  holds  tena- 
ciously to  all  he  gets.  To  our  Saxon  and  Celtic  eyes  he  carries  these 
virtues  too  far  ;  but  thereby  he  wins,  becomes  powerful,  and  scorning 
boisterous  mirth  and  passion,  is  comparatively  happy." 

The  Jews,  then,  have  an  extraordinary  amount 
of  vitality.  Why  is  this  ?  The  explanation  of  it 
which  Richardson  sees  is  that  they  lead  a  more 
moral  life  than  other  people.  Now,  in  the  first 
place,  no  one,  it  seems  to  me,  can  suppose  that 
there  is  enough  difference  between  the  Jew's  out- 
ward life  and  the  Christian's  to  make  this  immense 
difference  in  longevity.  And,  in  the  second  place, 
suppose  there  was,  why  should  Jews  lead  better 
lives  than  Christians  ?  That  they  do  lead  better 
lives  I  am  prepared  to  believe.    But  why  do  they  } 


•jS  MAN'S  MORAL  NA  TURE. 

What  makes  each  one  of  us  live  as  good  lives  as  we 
do  live  ?  I  do  not  say  that  our  lives  are  good,  but 
we  all  know  that  they  might  be  worse  than  they 
are.  What  makes  them,  then,  as  good  as  they  are  ? 
Surely  the  elevation,  such  as  it  is,  of  our  moral  na- 
tures. Well,  then,  supposing  the  Jews'  lives  are 
better  than  our  lives,  it  is  a  fair  inference  that  their 
moral  natures  are,  on  an  average,  better,  that  is, 
higher  than  our  moral  natures — that  with  them 
love  and  faith  are  more  developed,  and  hate  and 
fear  more  restricted  in  proportion  than  with  us. 
But  although  these  considerations  are  entitled  to 
a  certain  amount  of  weight,  I  do  not  propose 
to  rest  my  argument  upon  them.  I  have  surer 
ground.  This  ground  is  that  the  Jews  have  in- 
itiated the  most  advanced  religions  of  the  world 
during  the  whole  course  of  its  history.  Jesus 
said :  **  Ye  shall  know  them  by  their  fruits.  Do 
men  gather  grapes  of  thorns  or  figs  of  thistles  ?  " 
Could  a  race  with  a  low  moral  nature  originate  a 
high  religion  ?  That  is  like  asking,  has  a  man  with 
a  low  moral  nature  a  high  moral  nature  ?  or  is  a 
short  man  tall  ?  No  one,  I  fancy,  will  dispute,  if 
he  is  capable  of  understanding  what  he  is  talking 
about,  that  the  race  which  produced  the  lawgivers, 
psalmists,  prophets,  and  finally  Jesus  himself,  was 
and  therefore  doubtless  is,  the  race  which  possessed 
and  possesses  the  supreme  moral  nature  of  this 
planet.     Here,   then,   we  have  one  instance   of 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL  NATURE. 


79 


lenorth  of  life  associated  with  a  liiMi  moral  nature. 
This  fact,  standing  alone,  though  it  might  raise  a 
strong  presumption  in  our  minds  of  the  connection 
I  am  seeking  to  establish,  could  not  prove  it.  With- 
out stopping  to  discuss  how  it  might  be  evaded, 
let  us  go  on  to  the  second  of  the  four  facts  I  spoke 
of,  which  will  be  well  calculated  to  support  it. 

There  are  two  classes  of  great  men.  One  of 
them  is  great  by  elevation  of  the  moral  nature; 
the  other  class  is  great  by  intellectual  power.  The 
first  class  is  divisible  into  two  sections.  In  the  first 
section  stand  the  leaders  of  our  race  in  the  eternal 
war  against  the  powers  of  darkness.  These  are 
the  men  who  are  exceptionally  endowed  with  the 
supreme  faculty — faith.  They  are  the  great  re- 
ligious founders  and  innovators.  The  other  sec- 
tion of  this  class  comprises  the  men  who  come  next 
after  them  as  benefactors  of  humanity.  These  are 
the  men  who  possess  in  fullest  degree  the  divine 
faculty — love.  These  are  the  great  artists,  whether 
poets,  musicians,  painters,  or  sculptors.  The  second 
class  of  great  men  is  also  divisible  into  two  sections. 
The  first  section  is  composed  of  the  philosophers — 
men  who  are  great  by  their  power  of  abstract  rea- 
soning. The  other  section  is  made  up  of  scientists 
— men  who  are  great  by  development  of  what  may 
be  called  the  external  faculties  of  the  intellect,  such 
as  perception,  conception,  memory,  and  comparison. 

Now,  we  all  know  that,  although  a  man  may 


8o  MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 

possibly  have  one  or  more.of  these  classes  of  mental 
qualities  highly  developed,  and  the  rest  below  the 
average,  that  this  is  not  the  rule.  Usually,  if  faith 
is  extraordinarily  developed,  love  is  at  least  well 
developed.  And  if  the  moral  nature,  as  a  whole, 
is  of  a  first-class  order,  that  the  intellectual  nature 
will  be  good  and  probably  very  good.  And,  con- 
versely, that  a  first-class  intellect  implies,  as  a  rule, 
a  high  if  not  a  very  high  moral  nature.  There  are 
two  principal  reasons  why  this  must  be  true.  The 
first  is,  that  of  whatever  parts  of  the  nervous  sys- 
tem these  two  are  functions,  the  organs  to  which 
they  are  thus  related  are  closely  allied,  and  a  high 
development  of  the  one  will  be  almost  certainly 
accompanied  by  a  high  development  of  the  other. 
The  second  reason  is,  that  the  activity  and  efficiency 
of  the  intellectual  nature  is  largely  dependent  upon 
the  degree  of  development  of  the  moral  nature, 
which  last  is  undoubtedly  the  driving  power  of  our 
mental  mechanism,  as  the  great  sympathetic  is  the 
driving  power  of  our  bodily  organization.  What  I 
mean  is,  and  I  think  that  every  one  will  agree  with 
me  here,  that,  with  the  same  intellectual  power,  the 
outcome  of  that  power  will  be  vastly  greater  with  a 
high  moral  nature  behind  it  than  it  will  be  with 
a  low  moral  nature  behind  it.  In  other  words, 
that  with  a  given  brain  a  man  who  has  strong  and 
hiofh  desires  will  arrive  at  more  and  truer  results 
of  reflection  than  if,  with  the  same  brain,  his  desires 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  THE  MORAL  NATURE.        8i 

are  comparatively  mean  and  low.  We  are  safe, 
then,  I  think,  in  saying  that,  as  a  rule  and  on  the 
average,  a  high  moral  nature  implies  a  high  intel- 
lectual nature  ;  and,  conversely,  that  a  high  intel- 
lectual nature  implies  a  high  moral  nature.  When 
I  had  arrived  at  this  stage  of  the  argument  in  my 
own  mind,  I  took  a  cyclopaedia  of  biography,  which, 
of  course,  contained  the  names  of  all  the  men  and 
women  who  have  lived  in  historical  times  noted 
for  intellectual  or  moral  greatness,  and  with  the  aid 
of  my  friend,  Dr.  Burgess,  I  took  every  age  given 
in  the  book,  with  the  exception  of  such  as  were 
manifestly  errors  by  misprint  or  otherwise.  I  left 
out  those,  and  such  persons  as  Parr  and  Jenkins 
whose  only  title  to  admission  to  the  cyclopaedia  was 
their  extraordinarily  long  life.  I  left  out,  also,  all 
ages  over  one  hundred  and  twenty  as  probably 
exaggerated,  though  by  doing  this  I  no  doubt  lost 
several  great  ages.  The  result  was  remarkable. 
I  got  13,534  ages  from  fifteen  to  one  hundred  and 
twenty  years.     Of  these  13,534  people, 

20  died  between  the  ages  of    1 5   and  20 
91 


2o5 

341 
435 

568 

776 

1068 


«(  (( 

<(  (( 

K  <( 

((  (< 

a  «( 


20 

25 

25 

30 

30 

35 

35 

40 

40 

45 

45 

5o 

5o 

55 

«  (( 

it  (( 

U  it 

it  (< 

H  It 

it  it 

U  tt 

it  tt 

«  (( 

((  tt 


60 

65 

65 

70 

70 

7S 

75 

80 

80 

85 

85 

90 

90 

95 

95 

100 

100 

io5 

io5 

no 

no 

ii5 

ii5 

120 

82  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

1293  died  between  the  ages  of  55  and  60 

1645       " 

1693       "       " 

1835 

1445 

12l5 

555 
240 

69 

19 

i5 

3 
3 

The  average  age  of  the  whole  number  is  63*464 
years,  say  635  years.  Now,  in  estimating  the  value 
of  this  result,  several  considerations  must  be  kept 
in  view.  On  the  one  hand,  we  must  recollect  that 
a  good  many  of  these  men,  such  as  the  great  scien- 
tists and  philosophers,  had  to  live  to  forty  or  per- 
haps fifty  years  of  age  to  get  time  to  do  the  work 
which  gave  them  admission  to  the  cyclopcedia, 
though  a  large  number  of  men  of  this  class  died  at 
ages  from  thirty  years  downward.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  have  to  remember  that  many  of  these 
men  were  soldiers,  sailors,  missionaries,  partakers 
in  revolutions,  martyrs,  explorers,  and,  in  a  word, 
were  in  positions  which  frequently  entailed  an  early 
death  by  violence.  We  must  also  remember  that 
these  men  lived,  many  of  them,  in  tropical  and 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL  NATURE.        83 

unhealthy  countries,  and  many  belonged  to  times 
and  countries  in  which  the  average  duration  of  life 
was  not  as  great  as  it  is  in  modern  civilized  nations. 
It  is  upon  observation  of  these  that  our  life  ta- 
bles are  based.  In  spite  of  all  these  drawbacks,  I 
find  that  in  England  the  average  age  at  death  of 
magistrates,  clergymen,  merchants,  gardeners,  ma- 
sons and  bricklayers,  surgeons,  butchers,  lawyers, 
joiners  and  carpenters,  house-painters,  millers  and 
bakers,  all  of  whom  had  to  be  taken  at  from  twenty 
to  fifty  years  old  to  start  with,  was  only  54*72,  say 
fifty-four  and  three-quarter  years,  against  sixty- 
three  and  one-half  years — the  average  age  at  death 
of  our  lives  from  the  cyclopeedia — a  difference  of 
eight  and  three-quarter  years  in  favor  of  the  lat- 
ter. More  than  this,  I  took  all  the  ages  from  the 
cyclopaedia  from  fifty  years  upward,  an  age  which 
would  exclude  almost  totally  our  first  considera- 
tion, which  was,  it  will  be  remembered,  that  these 
men  had  to  live  to  a  certain  age  to  do  the  work 
which  entitled  them  to  a  place  in  the  cyclopeedia, 
but  which  would  not,  of  course,  exclude  the  oppo- 
site consideration,  viz. :  that  these  men  lived  in 
many  times  and  countries,  and  often  met  violent 
deaths.  I  then  compared  the  ages  from  fifty  up- 
ward with  what  is  called  the  English  Life  Table. 
I  had  eleven  thousand  and  ninety-eight  ages  of 
fifty  years  and  upward  from  the  cyclopaedia.  I 
found  that  of  that  number  three  hundred  and  forty- 


84  MAN'S  MORAL   NATURE. 

nine  passed  the  age  of  ninety — that  is,  one  in  every 
thirty-two.  Now,  according  to  the  EngHsh  Life 
Table,  of  four  thousand  six  hundred  and  sixty-two 
men  at  fifty,  only  one  hundred  and  fourteen  pass 
the  age  of  ninety — that  is,  one  in  every  forty-one 
— an  immense  difference,  as  you  see,  especially 
when  we  consider  the  disadvantages  above  men- 
tioned under  which  the  men  from  the  cyclopcedia 
labor.  I  made  comparisons  many  other  ways,  and 
all  with  the  same  result.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
the  average  length  of  life  of  what  we  call  great 
men  is  greater  than  it  is  among  ordinary  men,  pro- 
bably by  six  or  eight  years  at  the  least. 

Without  stopping  to  comment  further  on  this 
fact  now,  let  us  pass  on  to  the  third  fact  which  we 
have  to  consider  in  this  connection.  This  fact 
is  that  married  men  and  women  live  longer — by 
some  five  years  on  an  average — than  men  and 
women  who  are  not  married.  The  only  reason 
assigned  for  this  difference  is  that  men  pick  the 
healthiest  women  to  marry,  and  that  women  pick 
the  healthiest  men.  Now,  although  I  am  will- 
ing to  allow  that  this  consideration  is  entitled  to 
some  weight,  still  I  am  satisfied  it  is  more  than 
balanced  in  the  female  sex  by  the  loss  of  life  inci- 
dent to  parturition;  and  strange  to  say,  there  is  a 
greater  difference  between  the  length  of  life  of 
married  and  single  women  than  there  is  between 
the  length   of  life   of  married  and  single  men. 


PHYSICAL    BASIS    OF    THE   MORAL    NATURE.      S5 


The  real  explanation  of  this  fact  from  our  present 
point  of  view  lies  on  the  surface.  Why  do  men 
and  women  marry?  In  ninety-nine  cases  out  of 
a  hundred  they  marry  because  they  love  one 
another.  This  ought  to  be  the  sole  reason  for 
marriage,  and  it  really  is  nearly  the  sole  reason. 
If  the  capacity  for  loving  in  a  given  individual 
reaches  a  certain  point,  it  is  just  about  certain  that 
that  individual  will  marry,  for  two  reasons.  The 
first  is,  that  given  a  certain  capacity  for  loving, 
and  the  individual  man  or  woman  will  seek  to 
marry.  And  the  rule  holds  here  as  in  other 
matters,  "  Seek,  and  ye  shall  find."  The  second 
reason  is,  that  nothing  attracts  love  like  love. 
No  beauty,  accomplishments,  or  wealth,  make  a 
man  or  woman  half  so  attractive  to  the  opposite 
sex  as  a  loving  heart.  The  result  is,  since  the 
greater  the  capacity  for  love  the  better  is  the 
moral  nature,  that,  on  the  average,  the  higher 
moral  natures  marry  and  the  lower  ones  do  not. 
So  here  again  we  find  the  higher  moral  nature 
associated  with  greater  length  of  life. 

The  fourth  and  last  fact  is  that  women  live 
longer  than  men  by  some  two  to  four  years  on 
an  average.  The  exact  difference  of  length  of 
lite  of  women  and  men  is  not  perhaps  known  ; 
but  It  is  certain  that  women  live  longer  than  men 
by  about  the  time  above  mentioned.  It  is  stated 
above  (p.  65)   that  the  moral   nature   is   more 


86  MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 

and  the  intellectual  less  developed  In  women 
than  In  men,  also  that  the  great  sympathetic  is 
probably  larger  while  the  brain  Is  certainly 
smaller  in  the  female  than  in  the  male  sex  of  our 
species.  Now,  is  it  true  that  the  moral  nature  is 
higher  in  women  than  it  Is  in  men  ?  I  believe  it  is. 
And  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  balance  of  opinion 
is  in  favor  of  this  view.  I  believe  women  have, 
on  an  average,  a  greater  capacity  of  love  and 
faith  than  men  have,  and,  on  an  average,  a  less 
capacity  for  hate  and  fear.  The  woman's  excess 
of  faith  is  shown  chiefly  in  her  superior  power  of 
endurance  and  her  greater  patience  under  suf- 
fering and  ill-usage.  In  matters  of  religion  I  do 
not  know  that  women  have  more  faith  than  men  ; 
they  certainly  have  a  greater  capacity  of  belief  ; 
but  this,  as  we  have  seen  above,  is  quite  a  differ- 
ent thing,  and  is  due  largely  to  the  inferiority  of 
their  intellectual  nature.  I  think  there  is  no 
doubt  that  women  surpass  men  in  their  power  of 
loving.  Maternal  love  has  always,  and  I  think 
justly,  been  considered  the  most  intense  and  en- 
during of  all  forms  of  this  passion.  I  believe  all 
physicians  will  agree  that  women  have  less  fear 
of  death  than  men  have.  If  this  were  granted  It 
would  almost  follow  that  women  have  less  fear 
than  men.  Finally,  though  one  cannot  prove 
such  points  as  this,  I  am  satisfied  that  women 
hate  less  than  men  do.     Women  are  very  sub- 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  THE  MORAL  NATURE.       87 

ject  to  passing  anger  and  petty  spite,  but  they 
very  seldom  hate  deeply.  There  are  very  few 
murders  committed  by  women  in  comparison  to 
the  number  committed  by  men,  though  women 
on  an  average  have  greater  provocation  to  the 
commission  of  this  act  than  men  have,  and  fully 
as  great  facilities  for  its  accomplishment.  It  is 
said  that  there  is  only  one  suicide  committed  by 
women  for  three  committed  t)y  men  ;  and  that 
female  criminals  are  in  proportion  to  male  crimi- 
nals as  one  to  five.  But  some  one  may  say:  If 
women  have  a  higher  moral  nature  than  men 
have,  how  is  it  that  there  are  no  religious  founders 
and  so  few  supreme  artists  among  the  members 
of  this  sex?  The  reason  is,  that  although  the  es- 
sential factor  in  a  religious  founder  is  faith,  and 
in  a  supreme  artist  love,  yet  a  high  grade  of  in- 
tellect must  go  along  with  the  high  moral  nature 
if  anything  great  in  either  of  these  lines  is  to 
be  achieved.  Well,  we  know  that  the  average 
weight  of  a  woman's  brain  is  forty-four  ounces, 
against  forty-nine  and  one-half  ounces  for  the 
average  weight  of  a  man's  brain ;  but  the  know- 
ledge of  this  fact  is  not  necessary  to  assure  us 
that  woman's  intellect  is  very  much  below  the 
level  of  man's.  Lacking,  therefore,  one  essential 
factor  of  greatness,  woman  cannot  be  great  in  the 
same  way  that  the  greatest  men  are  great ;  but 
she  can  be  great  in  the  sense  of  being  good,  and 


88  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

in  this  sense  she  is  greater  than  man.  And  so 
far  as  civiHzation  has  yet  gone,  which  does  not 
seem  to  me  to  be  very  far,  women  have  been, 
and  are,  in  the  best  and  truest  sense  of  the  word, 
the  acknowledged  civilizers  of  the  race. 

Now,  these  four  facts  taken  together  are 
tolerably  exhaustive.  All  men  and  women  are 
either  married  or  not  married.  All  men  are 
either  Jews  or  not  Jews.  All  men  are  either 
great  or  not  great.  And  finally,  the  race  is  di- 
vided into  men  and  women.  If  it  is  said  that 
the  longevity  of  the  Jews  is  not  connected  with 
their  high  moral  nature,  but  is  an  unexplained 
peculiarity  of  their  race,  I  say,  that  explanation 
does  not  apply  to  the  other  three  cases.  And  I 
say  that  I  want  an  explanation  that  will  cover  all 
the  facts.  If  it  is  said,  as  to  the  second  case, 
that  great  moral  and  intellectual  activity  imply 
a  high  vitality,  and  therefore,  on  the  average, 
a  long  life,  I  say  that  objection  in  part  admits 
my  argument,  and  that  in  part  it  is  not  true, 
for  men  on  the  whole  are  higher  mentally  than 
women,  and  yet  women  live  longer  than  men. 
The  fact  is,  the  only  thing  that  can  be  shown, 
as  far  as  I  can  see,  to  be  common  to  Jews,  great 
men,  married  people,  and  women,  as  against  non- 
Jews,  ordinary  men,  unmarried  people,  and  men, 
is  a  higher  moral  nature.  In  the  three  first  cases 
there  is,  doubtless,  along  with  the  higher  moral 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL  NATURE,       89 

nature,  a  better  intellectual  nature,  which,  as  I 
have  shown,  is  a  necessary  accompaniment  of  the 
former  in  cases  where  the  conditions  are  the 
same  ;  but  there  is  no  visible  connection  between 
a  good  intellect  and  length  of  life.  And  in  the 
last  case  this  condition  is  reversed,  for  in  women 
the  intellectual  nature  is  lower  than  in  men, 
while  the  moral  nature  is  higher  and  the  length 
of  life  greater.  If,  however,  you  adopt  the  hypo- 
thesis that  the  moral  nature  is  a  function  of  the 
great  sympathetic,  there  is  a  very  plain  connec- 
tion between  elevation  of  the  moral  nature  and 
longevity;  and  what  I  say  is,  that  to  account  for 
the  facts  you  must  adopt  that  hypothesis;  for  I 
say  that  the  only  explanation  which  will  cover 
all  the  facts  is  that  the  moral  nature,  being  a 
function  of  the  great  sympathetic,  'and  the  great 
sympathetic  being  par  excellence  the  organ  of 
vitality,  longevity  and  moral  elevation  are  neces- 
sarily connected. 

The  second  clause  of  this  argument  need  not 
detain  us  long.  It  is:  Length  of  life  depends  on 
the  degree  of  perfection  of  the  great  sympa- 
thetic. No  one,  I  think,  who  realizes  what  the 
well-understood  functions  of  the  great  sympa- 
thetic are,  will  deny  that  this  proposition  is 
almost  self-evident,  since  it  is  known  that  this 
nervous  system  underlies  and  controls  all  the 
essentially   vital   functions,   such    as    digestion, 


90 


MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 


secretion,  circulation,  and,  above  all,  nutrition. 
Death  is  really,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  due  to 
— I  might  almost  say  is — failure  of  nutrition, 
therefore  failure  of  the  great  sympathetic.  For 
the  degenerative  changes  which  usher  in  and 
lead  to  death  in  old  age,  though  they  are  more 
clearly  seen  by  us  to  result  from  this  cause,  are 
really  not  more  especially  due  to  failure  of  nutri- 
tion than  are  many  other  conditions  which  lead 
to  death. 

It  is  my  belief,  then,  that  the  arguments  urged 
in  this  eighth  general  consideration,  though  they 
might  not  be  conclusive  of  themselves,  are  en- 
titled to  very  great  weight  when  taken  along 
with  the  other  arguments  contained  in  this  chap- 
ter, and  that  they  will  go  a  long  way  toward  per- 
suading the  attentive  and  unprejudiced  reader 
that  the  moral  nature  is  one  of  the  functions  of 
the  great  sympathetic. 

In  further  considering  this  part  of  our  subject, 
we  have  to  look  at  the  problem  from  two  sides, 
the  converse  of  each  other.  First,  we  have  to 
consider  the  different  ways  emotions  are  caused 
or  excited,  and  see  whether  these  causes  are  such 
as  act  upon  the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  system  or 
upon  the  great  sympathetic.  Then,  secondly,  an 
emotion  being  excited,  we  have  to  consider  the 
expression  of  this  emotion,  that  is,  its  effect  upon 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  THE  MORAL  NATURE.        ^i 

the  economy,  and  see  whether  those  organs  sup- 
plied by  the  sympathetic  are  primarily  affected 
and  most  affected  by  the  nervous  disturbance 
which  Is  the  physical  accompaniment  of  the  emo- 
tion, or  whether  those  organs  supplied  by  the 
cerebro-splnal  nervous  system  are  those  which  are 
first  and  most  affected. 

We  have,  then,  to  consider,  in  the  first  place, 
emotional  excitants,  and  to  try  to  determine  from 
their  seat  and  nature  which  nervous  system  it 
is  that  they  act  upon  in  giving  rise  to  an  emo- 
tional state.  Now  emotions  are  aroused  In  three 
ways  :  first,  spontaneously — from  some  condition 
of  the  body  or  part  of  the  body  ;  secondly,  they 
are  excited  by  thoughts  through  associations 
formed  in  the  past  either  of  the  individual  or  of 
the  race  ;  thirdly,  they  are  excited  by  impressions 
received  through  the  senses  without  the  interven- 
tion of  thought. 

A  complete  list  of  the  instances  in  which  emo- 
tions arise  spontaneously,  or  from  some  condition 
of  the  body  or  part  of  the  body,  would  be  much  too 
long  to  be  recited  here.  I  will  first  mention  one 
or  two  physiological  and  then  proceed  to  a  few 
pathological  conditions. 

Let  us  first  notice  the  relation  which  exists 
between  age  and  the  activity  of  the  moral  nature 
in  general.  In  childhood  and  youth  you  know 
that  there  is  a  constant  and  rapid  succession  of 


92 


MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 


emotional  states.  A  healthy,  active  child  is 
either  in  a  state  of  joy  or  grief  nearly  all  the 
time  while  awake.  Boys  and  girls  are  almost 
constantly  either  playing,  quarreling,  or  sulking  ; 
that  is,  there  is  some  active  emotional  condition 
present  nearly  all  the  time.  Young  men  and 
women — that  is,  very  young  men  and  women — 
are  almost  equally  liable  to  this  constant  domi- 
nation of  one  emotional  state  after  another. 
Youth  is  the  age  of  impulse  and  passion — it  is 
the  age  of  bad  poetry  in  the  male  and  of  hysteria 
in  the  female.  This  law  is  as  well  exemplified  in 
the  lower  animals  as  it  is  in  man — lambs,  kit- 
tens, puppies,  and  probably  the  young  of  all  ani- 
mals, are  much  more  emotional  than  adults  of 
the  same  species.  But  from  childhood  to  matu- 
rity is  not  the  age  during  which  the  higher  centres 
of  the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  system  are  especially 
active.  These  children  who  are  so  fond  of  play 
and  so  apt  to  sulk,  and  these  poetical  young  men 
and  hysterical  young  women  are  not  particularly 
either  thoughtful  or  studious.  There  is,  in  fact, 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  there  is  during  this 
period  any  extraordinary  activity  of  any  of  the 
higher  cerebral  centres.  I  say  advisedly,  "  higher 
cerebral  centres,"  because  we  know  that  in  youth 
the  sensory  motor  tract  of  the  cerebro-spinal  ner- 
vous system  is  more  active  than  it  is  in  later  life. 
But  we  also  know  that  there  is  a  most  elaborate 


PHYSICAL    BASIS   OF    THE   MORAL    NATURE.      ^3 

and  intimate  connection  between  this  sensory 
motor  tract  and  the  great  sympathetic  ;  and  we 
know  too,  that  the  actions  of  childhood  and  youth 
are  prompted  more  by  emotional  impulse  than  are 
the  actions  of  mature  men  and  women  ;  so  that 
the  great  activity  of  the  sensory  motor  tract  of 
the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  system  during  this 
period  of  life  does  not  necessarily  tell  against  my 
argument. 

It  is  a  fact,  then,  that  in  youth,  the  moral  nature 
is  markedly  more  active  than  it  is  later  in  life,  and 
it  is  a  fact  that  the  intellectual  nature  is  not  mark- 
edly more — that  it  is  even  less — active  in  youth 
than  at  maturity ;  and  furthermore,  it  is  a  fact  that 
the  great  sympathetic  nervous  system  is  very 
much  more  active  in  childhood  and  youth  than  it 
is  afterward,  as  shown  by  its  universally  acknow- 
ledged functions — for  instance,  by  the  greater  ac- 
tivity of  all  the  secretions,  by  the  greater  activity 
of  digestion,  assimilation,  and  nutrition. 

If  then  we  join,  as  it  seems  to  me  that  we  must 
join,  the  excess  of  function  to  the  more  active 
organs  the  inference  is  plain — it  is,  that  the  moral 
nature  is  a  function  of  the  great  sympathetic. 

The  next  most  prominent  physiological  condi- 
tion which  gives  rise  to  an  emotional  state  is  un- 
doubtedly that  which  underlies  the  development 
.  of  sexual  passion.  The  essential  part  of  this  con- 
dition is  certainly  an  active  and  healthy  state  of 


94  MAN'S   MORAL   NATURE. 

the  testes  or  ovaries;  for  if  all  the  other  condi- 
tions be  present,  and  these  organs  alone  be  either 
absent  or  materially  injured  by  disease,  or  imma- 
ture, or  atrophied,  or  if  they  be  functionally  inert 
from  any  other  cause,  this  particular  emotional 
state  cannot  be  produced ;  while  the  absence  or 
disease  of  no  other  organ  will  operate  as  a  posi- 
tive bar  to  its  existence.  The  presence  in  the 
mind  of  the  image  of  ^  person  of  the  opposite 
sex,  although  to  the  unthinking  it  seems  to  be  the 
chief  factor  in  the  production  of  this  emotional 
state,  has  in  reality  nothing  at  all  to  do  with  it  in 
any  fundamental  sense,  for  this  emotion  may  ex- 
ist without  any  such  image  being  present,  and, 
being  fully  aroused,  it  may  in  many  people  be 
readily  transferred  from  one  mental  image  to 
another,  whereas  if  it  were  dependent  upon  the 
image  this  could  not  happen.  It  is  in  this  way 
that  we  may  account  for  those  cases,  frequently 
seen,  in  which  a  man,  upon  a  very  short  acquaint- 
ance, marries  a  second  woman,  upon  the  break- 
ing off  of  an  "Engagement  with  a  first.  Again,  in 
the  higher  animals — in  whom  we  must  admit  a 
mental  structure  in  sexual  matters,  almost,  if  not 
quite  identical  with  our  own — though  some  of 
them  will  not  transfer  their  affections  from  one 
object  to  another,  or  will  do  so  only  with  great 
difficulty,  and  after  a  certain  period  of  mourning,^ 
yet  in  others  there  seems  little  or  no  cohesion 


PHYSICAL    BASIS   OF    THE  MORAL   NATURE. 


95 


between  the  mental  image  and  the  emotional 
state,  so  that  the  sexual  glands  being  active,  and 
the  emotional  condition  in  question  being  present, 
the  individual  upon  whom  the  sexual  favors  may 
be  bestowed  is  a  matter,  apparently,  of  entire  in- 
difference. These  considerations  seem  to  me 
conclusive  against  the  theory  that  this  emotional 
condition  is  dependent  upon  the  mental  image, 
and  the  reasons  above  given  seem  also  to  estab- 
lish the  position  that  the  state  of  the  sexual  se- 
creting glands  is  the  real  determining  cause  of 
the  emotion.  This  being  the  case,  we  have  next 
to  ask,  with  which  nervous  system  these  glands 
are  most  intimately  connected  ?  You  know  what 
the  answer  to  this  question  is.  The  ovaries  re- 
ceive no  nerves  but  from  the  sympathetic,  and 
the  testes,  as  pointed  out  above,  receive  nerves 
from  the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  system  only  be- 
cause they  are  exposed  and  require  to  be  en- 
dowed with  sensibility  for  their  protection.  But 
if  the  sympathetic  nerves  be  the  connecting  link 
between  the  organ  whose  condition  excites  the 
emotion  and  the  nerve  centre  In  which  that  emo- 
tion arises,  that  centre  must  be  the  great  sympa- 
thetic system. 

The  pathologlcarconditions  which  give  rise  to 
active  emotional  states  are  extremely  numerous, 
and  I  wish  particularly,  in  this  connection,  to 
draw  attention  to  the  fact  that  it  it  is  invariably 


96  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

in  lesions  of  organs  well  supplied  by  the  sympa- 
thetic that  these  perversions  of  the    emotional 
nature  occur.     As  a  rule,  in  diseases  of  organs 
which  are  comparatively  scantily  supplied  by  the 
sympathetic,  such  as  the  bones,  muscles,  or  lungs, 
there  is  little  or  no  derangement  of  the  moral 
nature  ;  on  the  other  hand,  in  diseases  of  the 
stomach,  heart,  liver,  kidneys,  suprarenal  glands, 
and  of  the  testes,  ovaries,  and  uterus,  there  is 
always  some,  and  often  great,  disturbance  of  the 
emotions.     In  cancer  of  the  stomach,  ulceration 
of  the  stomach,  and  chronic  gastritis,  there  is  a 
good  deal  of  emotional  disturbance.     All  physi- 
cians who  have  been  much  engaged  in  general 
practice  have  seen  cases  of  dyspepsia  in  which 
constant  low  spirits   and   occasional  attacks   of 
terror  rendered  the  patient's  condition  pitiable 
in  the  extreme.     I   have  observed   these   cases 
often,  and  have  watched  them  closely,  and  I  have 
never  seen  greater  suffering  of  any  kind  than  I 
have  witnessed  during  these  attacks.     Now,  how 
do  we  know  that  these  pathological  conditions  of 
the  stomach  produce  terror  and  low  spirits  by 
impressions  conveyed  through  sympathetic  nerves 
to  sympathetic  ganglia  and  not  by  impressions 
conveyed   through    the   pneumogastrics   to   the 
brain  ?     We  infer  it  because  all  the  accompany- 
ing morbid  phenomena  are  certainly  due  to  dis- 
turbance  of  the   sympathetic.     Thus,  a  man  is 


PHYSICAL   BASIS   OF    THE   MORAL   NATURE. 


97 


suffering  from  what  we  call  nervous  dyspepsia. 
Some  day,  we  will  suppose  in  the  middle  of  the 
afternoon,  without  any  warning  or  visible  cause, 
one  of  these  attacks  of  terror  comes  on.  The 
first  thing  the  man  feels  is  great  but  vague  dis- 
comfort. Then  he  notices  that  his  heart  is  beat- 
ing much  too  violently.  At  the  same  time, 
shocks  or  flashes  as  of  electrical  discharges,  so 
violent  as  to  be  almost  painful,  and  accompanied 
by  a  feeling  of  extreme  distress,  pass  one  after 
another  through  his  body  and  limbs.  Then  in  a 
few  minutes  he  falls  into  a  condition  of  the  most 
intense  fear.  He  is  not  afraid  of  anything ;  he 
is  simply  afraid.  His  mind  is  perfectly  clear. 
He  looks  for  a  cause  of  his  wretched  condition, 
but  sees  none.  Presently  his  terror  is  such  that 
he  trembles  violently  and  utters  low  moans  ;  his 
body  is  damp  with  perspiration;  his  mouth  is 
perfectly  dry;  and  at  this  stage  there  are  no 
tears  in  his  eyes,  though  his  suffering  is  intense. 
When  the  climax  of  the  attack  is  reached  and 
passed  there  is  a  copious  flow  of  tears,  or  else  a 
mental  condition  in  which  the  person  weeps  upon 
the  least  provocation.  At  this  stage  a  large 
quantity  of  pale  urine  is  passed.  Then  the  heart's 
action  becomes  again  normal,  and  the  attack 
passes  off.  There  is  nothing  imaginary  about  this 
description.  It  is  taken  word  for  word  from  the 
account  given  to  the  present  writer  by  the  actual 
5 


qS  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

sufferer,  who  is  himself  a  highly  intellectual  medi- 
cal man.  Neither  is  the  description  a  summary 
of  a  number  of  attacks,  but  it  refers  to  one  par- 
ticular attack  which  was  witnessed  by  the  writer, 
and  I  am  satisfied  is  absolutely  accurate. 

Now,  what  I  wish  to  call  attention  to  is,  that 
all  disturbance  of  function  accompanying  one  of 
these  attacks  is  disturbance  of  function  presided 
over  by  the  sympathetic.  We  have  seen  above 
that  the  secretions  are  controlled  by  this  nervous 
system,  and  I  have  mentioned  how  the  salivary, 
lachrymal,  urinary,  and  cutaneous  secretions  are 
altered  both  by  diminution  and  increase  in  these 
attacks.  The  heart's  action  is  almost  certainly 
under  the  control  of  the  sympathetic,  and  it  is 
greatly  disturbed.  The  trembling,  as  more  fully 
explained  farther  on,  is  probably  the  phenomenon 
produced  when  voluntary  muscles  are  acted  upon 
and  thrown  into  action  by  the  sympathetic  ner- 
vous system.  On  the  other  hand  we  have  no  in- 
dication that,  during  the  attack  described,  the 
cerebro-spinal  nervous  system  is  in  any  way  ex- 
cited or  disturbed.  The  intellect  is  clear;  the 
reasoning  and  perceptive  faculties  alike  in  perfect 
order;  the  control  of  the  will  over  the  voluntary 
muscles,  through  the  medium  of  this  nervous 
system,  is  in  no  way  interfered  with ;  and,  in  fact, 
so  little  is  the  centre  of  ideation  involved,  that,  as 
I  have  stated,  no  m^^ntal  image  is  associated  with 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL   NATURE.        gg 


the  emotion  of  terror — the  man  suffers  simply 
from  fear,  not  from  fear  of  something.  It  seems, 
then,  clear  to  me  th^t  the  great  sympathetic  is 
the  nervous  system  acted  upon  by  the  abnormal 
condition  of  the  stomach,  which  nervous  system 
in  its  turn  reacts  upon  the  economy,  and  conse- 
quently that  the  terror  in  question  is  one  of  its 
functions. 

When  the  terror  thus  excited  continues  for 
some  little  time,  it  associates  itself  with  an  idea, 
and  then  the  person  affected  is  afraid  of  some 
definite  thing  happening  (see  p.  i6);  and  it  is 
very  curious  to  notice  how  the  fear  attaches  it- 
self, not  to  the  thing  which  the  person  has  most 
cause  to  be  afraid  of,  but  to  the  ideas  which  oc- 
cupy the  most  prominent  place  in  his  mind. 
Thus,  among  many  cases  of  this  kind  known  to 
me,  where  the  condition  in  question  is  more  or 
less  chronic,  I  will  cite  three  to  illustrate  this 
point.  Case  No.  i  is  that  of  a  priest,  a  good 
and  wise  man,  and  with  him  the  terror  is  associ- 
ated with  the  idea  of  endless  misery,  though  he 
is  well  aware  of  the  absurdity  of  this  idea,  or,  at 
least,  of  the  absurdity  of  his  being  especially  ex- 
posed to  this  danger.  Case  No.  2  is  a  lawyer, 
and  a  very  shrewd  and  successful  business  man  ; 
with  him  the  terror  is  always  associated  with 
ideas  of  business  mistakes  and  loss  of  money, 
though  he  scarcely  ever  made  a  business  mistake 


lOo  MAN'S  MORAL   NATURE. 


in  his  life,  and  never  lost  any  money,  though  he 
has  made  a  great  deal.  Case  No.  3  is  a  medical 
man  of  good  ability,  and  with  him  the  terror  is 
always  associated  with  ideas  of  sudden  death,  in- 
curable disease,  and  poison,  though  he  is  a  healthy 
man,  and  as  little  liable  to  be  poisoned  as  any  one 
living. 

The  lungs  receive  a  very  small  supply  of  sym- 
pathetic nerves,  and  we  know  that  long-continued 
disease  of  their  tissue,  ending  in  destruction  of 
large  parts  of  this  tissue,  and  at  last  in  death, 
will  often  scarcely  give  rise  to  low  spirits,  never 
to  extreme  depression  or  to  violent  emotion  of 
any  kind.  The  heart  receives  a  very  large 
supply  of  sympathetic  nerves,  and  its  diseases, 
as  fatty  degeneration  of  its  substance,  and  cal- 
careous degeneration  of  its  arteries,  are  accom- 
panied by  very  great  depression  of  spirits,  and 
often  by  agonies  of  anxiety  and  terror.  Imper- 
fections of  the  cardiac  valves  and  contractions 
of  the  cardiac  orifices  are  not,  in  the  sense  in 
which  I  am  speaking,  diseases  at  all ;  for  there  is 
in  these  cases  no  tissue  change — there  is  simply 
a  change  in  the  mechanical  conditions. 

The  liver  is  moderately  well  supplied  with 
sympathetic  nerves,  and  there  is  a  moderate 
amount  of  disturbance  of  the  moral  nature  in 
cases  of  disease  of  its  tissue,  as  in  cancer,  and 
impairment  of  its  functions,  as  in  congestion;  but 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE   MORAL  NATURE,      jqi 

as  disease  of  the  liver,  either  structural  or  func- 
tional, seldom  or  never  occurs  without  structural 
disease  or  at  least  functional  derangement  of 
the  stomach  accompanying  it,  it  is  difficult  to  es- 
timate the  amount  of  the  disturbance  of  the  emo- 
tions caused  by  the  hepatic  conditions  them- 
selves. 

Emotional  conditions  excited  by  disease  of 
the  kidneys  are  undoubtedly  due,  in  great  part,  to 
the  destructive  changes  going  on  in  these  organs, 
but  they  are  also,  to  a  certain  extent,  due  to  the 
uraemic  poisoning  which  necessarily  accompanies 
them,  and  so  the  effects  of  the  blood  change  and 
of  the  organic  change  mask  one  another. 

But  the  pathological  condition  most  clearly  in 
favor  of  my  present  argument  is,  beyond  ques- 
tion, Addison's  disease  of  the  suprarenal  glands. 
The  number  and  size  of  sympathetic  nerves  sent 
to  these  small  bodies  is  extraordinarily  great. 
Moreover,  they  receive  no  cerebro-spinal  nerves 
at  all.  Any  one  who  has  ever  seen  cases  of  this 
disease  is  aware  of  the  extraordinary  effect  pro- 
duced by  disease  of  these  bodies  upon  the  moral 
nature.  Long  before  the  patient  is  obliged  by 
the  degree  of  his  illness  to  abandon  his  usual 
occupations,  he  is  greatly  troubled  with  listless- 
ness,  languor,  and  low  spirits,  and  as  the  disea^i^e 
advances  these  symptoms  increase,  and  attacks 
of  terror  and  extreme  low  spirits  are  common. 


I02  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

Now,  to  return  to  our  old  argument.  The  mor- 
bid action  is  in  the  suprarenal  gland.  The  nerves 
which  convey  the  impressions  which  excite  emo- 
tional disturbance  are  necessarily  here  sympa- 
thetic nerves.  The  nerve  centre  in  which  the 
emotional  disturbance  takes  place  is  therefore 
one  or  more  sympathetic  ganglia.  Therefore  the 
sympathetic  ganglia  are  the  nervous  centres  of 
emotional  states. 

In  the  second  place,  emotions  are  excited  by 
thoughts  through  their  associations  with  them, 
such  associations  having  been  formed  in  the  past 
history  of  the  individual,  or  much  more  often  in 
the  past  history  of  the  race  of  which  he  is  a  mem- 
ber. As  this  clause  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
physical  basis  of  the  moral  nature  it  is  not  treated 
in  this  place.  Reference  to  this  subject,  which  is 
too  large  to  be  fully  considered  in  this  essay, 
will  be  found  at  p.  33  et  seq. ;  it  is  also  inci- 
dentally touched  upon  in  many  places  throughout 
this  volume. 

The  third  and  last  class  of  emotional  excitants 
which  we  have  to  consider  consists  of  sense  im- 
pressions acting  upon  the  moral  i  ^ture  without 
the  intervention  of  thought.  The  nerves  of  the 
special  senses  lead  from  the  periphery  directly  to 
the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  centres.  So,  as  a  rule, 
when  sense  impressions  are  followed  by  mental 
states,  which  last  are  aroused  by  them,  the  first 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL  NATURE.      103 

phase  of  the  mental  state  Is  a  thought — the  re- 
alization by  consciousness  that  something  is  oc- 
curring or  exists  in  the  outer  world  ;  and  if  an 
emotion  is  excited,  it  is  so  secondarily,  by  the 
association  in  the  past  of  the  idea  directly  excited 
with  the  emotion  which  is  excited  in  the  second 
place.  This  rule  holds  good,  as  regards  the  senses 
of  sight  and  touch,  more  absolutely  than  as  re- 
gards the  other  senses,  and  it  is  more  true  of 
sight  than  of  any  other  sense. 

The  impressions  received  through  the  sense  of 
taste  can  hardly  be  said,  as  a  general  thing,  to 
excite  thought.  They  do  excite  a  sort  of  emo- 
tion. The  sense  of  smell  varies  greatly  in  differ- 
ent individuals  In  its  power  of  exciting  thought 
or  emotion.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  describes 
wonderfully  well  how  in  some  people  it  calls  up 
emotions.  In  others  this  sense  excites  ideas  very 
readily,  so  that  they  can  name  a  drug  or  other 
odorous  body  more  readily  from  its  smell  than 
from  its  look.  Others  again  cannot  name  the 
commonest  things  from  their  odor  The  excita- 
tion of  this  sense  with  them  awakens  a  pleasant 
or  a  disagreeable  sensation,  and  the  effect  stops 
there. 

But  the  sense  of  hearing  stands  apart  from 
the  other  senses  in  the  degree  to  which  it  is 
capable  of  transmitting  impressions  directly  to 
either  the   centres   of  intellectual  or  emotional 


I04  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

life.  Our  knowledge  of  the  anatomy  of  the  ner- 
vous system  is  not  minute  enough  to  enable  us  to 
say  why  there  exist  these  differences  between 
the  senses ;  why,  for  Instance,  sight  awakens 
only  Ideas,  and  hearing  either  Ideas  or  emotions 
according  to  certain  differences  In  the  sounds. 
We  know  that  If  we  trace  the  optic  nerves  Inward 
we  find  that  they  arise,  by  means  of  the  optic 
tracts,  from  the  posterior  and  superior  part  of  the 
mesocephale,  and  are  more  or  less  connected  with 
other  parts  of  the  brain  In  that  neighborhood. 
If  we  trace  the  portio  mollis  of  the  seventh  in- 
ward we  find  that  It  divides  Into  two  roots,  one  of 
which  passes  deeply  Into  the  central  part  of  the 
medulla  oblongata,  the  other  winds  around  the  cor- 
pus restlforme  to  the  floor  of  the  fourth  ventricle. 
In  this  connection  it  Is  worthy  of  remark  that  the 
auditory  ganglion  from  which  the  portio  mollis 
springs  is  the  lowest  down  of  all  the  ganglia  of 
the  medulla  oblongata ;  It  is,  therefore,  the  most 
contiguous  of  all  the  Intercranlal  ganglia  to  the 
larger  masses  of  the  great  sympathetic  ;  this  fact 
Increases  the  likelihood  of  some  closer  relation 
between  the  roots  of  the  auditory  nerve  and  the 
great  sympathetic  than  obtains  In  the  cases  of  the 
other  nerves  of  special  sense — but  it  proves  no- 
thing. But  If  It  were  possible  to  trace  the  roots  of 
this  nerve,  and  If  upon  tracing  them  to  their  origin 
it  were  found  that  one  of  them  belonged  to,  or 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  THE  MORAL  NATURE.      105 


had  intimate  connection  with,  the  great  sympa- 
thetic, while  the  other  belonged  to  the  cerebro- 
spinal system,  a  most  important  link  in  the  chain 
of  my  argument  would  be  supplied.  But  we  can- 
not say  that  this  is  the  case.  Failing  in  this  ana- 
tomical proof  of  a  special  connection  between  the 
auditory  nerve  and  the  great  sympathetic,  is  there 
anything  else  about  this  nerve  that  would  make 
us  think  that  it  contained  sympathetic  fibres  ? 
There  is  one  thing.  The  auditory  nerve  is  ex- 
ceptionally soft  In  texture  for  a  cerebro-spinal 
nerve — hence  its  name,  "  portio  mollis  ;"  and  we 
know  that  sympathetic  nerve  trunks  are  softer  in 
texture  than  the  trunks  of  cerebro-spinal  nerves. 
This  fact  might  lead  us  to  suspect  that  in  the 
"portio  mollis  "there  are  sympathetic  fibres  mixed 
with  cerebro-spinal  fibres,  but  it  can  do  no  more 
than  awaken  such  a  suspicion. 

Now,  as  to  the  sense  of  hearing  Itself.  All 
the  Infinite  variety  of  sounds  that  strike  upon  the 
human  ear  may  be  divided,  according  to  their 
effect  upon  the  human  organism,  Into  two  great 
classes — those,  namely,  which  primarily  excite 
thought,  and  those  which  primarily  excite  emo- 
tion. The  noise  of  a  carriage  on  the  street, 
of  fowl  In  the  yard,  of  steamboats  and  trains 
passing — these  and  thousands  of  other  ordinary 
sounds  simply  excite  a  mental  recognition  of  what 
the  sound  proceeds  from.  But  if  you  lie  under 
5* 


I06  MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 

pine  trees  on  a  summer's  day,  and  hear,  without 
listening,  the  wind  sigh  and  moan  through  the 
boughs,  the  emotional  nature  is  moved  irrespec- 
tively of  any  idea  that  may  be  excited.  So,  at 
the  bedside  of  a  sick  child,  its  moans  and  cries  of 
pain  affect  us  quite  out  of  proportion  to,  and 
irrespective  of,  the  value  our  minds  may  set 
upon  them  ;  for,  even  if  we  know  that  the  child 
is  not  dangerously  ill,  nor  suffering  very  much, 
still  we  cannot  prevent,  as  is  said  in  common  lan- 
guage, its  cries  going  to  our  heart.  And  they  do 
go  to  the  heart,  or  at  least  to  the  nervous  cen- 
tre of  the  emotional  nature,  direct.  So  a  cry  of 
pain  or  distress,  heard  suddenly,  awakens  a  cor- 
responding emotion  in  the  hearer  before  any 
thought  is  aroused. 

The  types  of  these  two  classes  of  sounds  are, 
on  the  one  hand,  spoken  language,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  music.  The  former  we  know  appeals 
directly  to  the  intellect,  and  does  or  does  not 
arouse  emotion,  according  as  the  thought  awak- 
ened is  or  is  not  associated  with  an  emotional 
state.  The  latter  we  also  know  appeals  directly  to 
the  emotions,  and  only  awakens  thought  seconda- 
rily, if  it  does  so  at  all.  Now,  does  that  class 
of  sounds  which  appeals  directly  to  the  moral 
nature,  possess  any  quality  which  the  other  class 
does  not  possess,  which  would  make  us  think  that 
it,  rather  than  the  latter,  acts  upon  the  sympa- 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL  NATURE.      107 

thetic  ?  It  has  three  such  qualities,  namely,  con- 
tinuity, rhythm,  and  range  of  intensity.  We  have 
seen  above  (p.  65  ct  seq.^  that  continuity  is  one 
characteristic  of  moral  states  as  distinguishing 
them  from  intellectual  states  ;  we  have  seen  also 
that  it  is  a  characteristic  of  the  functions  of  the 
great  sympathetic  nervous  system  as  distinguish- 
ing them  from  the  functions  of  the  cerebro-spinal 
nervous  system.  A  moment's  reflection  makes 
it  clear  that  continuity  is  also  a  characteristic  of 
sounds  that  awaken  emotion  as  distinguished 
from  sounds  that  awaken  thought.  It  is  seen  in 
such  sounds  as  the  murmur  of  wind  throucrh 
trees,  the  roar  of  waves  on  the  beach — but  it  is 
especially  noticeable  in  music  and  poetry ;  in 
these  the  successive  waves  of  sound  are  made 
to  depend  upon  one  another,  so  that  the  parts 
of  each  clause  of  the  music  or  poem  are  inter- 
dependent, and  require  to  be  read,  sung,  or 
played  through  in  order  that  the  full  effect  in- 
tended may  be  produced.  So,  secondly,  all  music 
is  rhythmic,  and  all  language  which  appeals  most 
directly  to  the  emotions,  that  is  to  say,  all  poetry, 
is  also  rhythmic.  Now,  rhythm  is  one  of  the  lead- 
ing qualities  of  the  functions  of  the  great  sympa- 
thetic. All  motions  governed  by  it  are  rhythmic 
— the  heart's  motion,  the  peristaltic  motion  of 
the  intestinal  canal,  and  the  contractions  of  the 
uterus  in  labor.     I  myself  have  no  doubt  that  the 


Io8  MAN'S  MORAL  NA  TURE, 

period  of  utero-gestation,  the  determining  cause 
of  which  has  puzzled  the  world  so  much,  as  well 
as  the  periodic  recurrence  of  ovulation,  are  both 
due  to  the  same  cause,  namely,  the  rhythm  or  pe- 
riodicity of  function  of  the  great  sympathetic 
nervous  system.  Doubtless  the  chief  advantage 
of  regularity  of  time  in  taking  meals  is  due  to 
the  fact  that  the  gastric  and  salivary  glands,  and 
other  organs  concerned  in  digestion,  being  gov- 
erned by  the  sympathetic,  their  functions  are  best 
perform*^  ^.  rhythmically.  The  rhythmic,  daily  rise 
and  fall  of  temperature,  both  in  health  and  dis- 
ease, is  another  example  of  the  rhythm  of  a  func- 
tion which  is  under  the  control  of  this  nervous 
system.  And,  thirdly,  musical  tones  possess  a 
quality  which  corresponds  closely  with  what  I 
have  called  range  of  intensity  (p.  71,  et  seq.),  and 
this  seems  to  me  to  form  another  link  be- 
tween them  and  the  great  sympathetic  nervous 
system. 

We  have  finally  to  consider  the  expression  of 
the  emotions,  to  see  if  we  can  determine  from 
which  nervous  system  these  phenomena  proceed. 
It  will  not  be  necessary  for  our  purpose  here  to 
discuss  the  whole  of  this  branch  of  the  inquiry, 
and  I  shall  limit  the  few  remarks  I  have  to  make 
to  the  expression  of*  joy,  grief,  hate,  fear ;  to  the 
expression  of,  or  if  the  term  be  preferred,  the 
effect  of,  long-continued,  excessive  passion  of  any 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL  NAl'URE.      109 

kind ;  and  to  a  summary  of  the  whole  :>abject  of 
the  expression  of  the  moral  nature. 

If  joy  is  at  all  marked  in  degree  it  alters  the 
heart's  action  ;  if  excessive  and  sudden  it  arrests 
it  momentarily ;  if  more  moderate  in  degree  it 
makes  it  more  frequent  and  stronger.  Excessive 
joy  causes  pallor  for  a  short  time,  and  then  slight 
flushing ;  moderate  joy  heightens  the  complexion. 
If  joy  is  at  all  extreme  it  excites  lachrymation  in 
persons  of  mobile  nervous  organization.  Sudden 
and  great  joy  destroys  the  appetite,  apparently 
by  checking  the  salivary  and  gastric  secretions ; 
moderate  joy  stimulates  the  appetite,  doubtless 
by  exciting  the  secretions  which  assist  in  diges- 
tion. 

Now,  all  the  above  are  disturbances  of  func- 
tions which  are  controlled  by  the  sympathetic  ; 
but  we  know  that  joy  also  gives  rise  to  movements 
of  various  kinds — for  instance,  laughter,  clapping 
of  the  hands,  stamping  of  the  feet,  which  are 
performed  by  voluntary  muscles  under  the  control 
of  the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  system.  The  pecu- 
liarity of  these  movements  is  that  they  are  all 
rhythmical,  and  we  know  what  a  tendency  there 
is  for  the  functions  of  the  sympathetic  to  be  per- 
formed rhythmically.  And  further,  they  are  all 
objectless  ;  the  intellect  takes  no  cognizance  of 
them,  and  no  purpose  or  intention  underlies  them. 

Now,  I  do  not  mean  to  argue  that  it  is  the 


jio  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

great  sympathetic  which  excites  the  muscles  to 
action  in  the  production  of  these  movements ; 
but  what  I  would  suggest  is  that  the  great  sym- 
pathetic, being  the  nervous  system  primarily  ex- 
cited, it  excites  the  cerebro-spinal  system  by 
means  of  its  elaborate  connection  with  the  latter, 
and  the  cerebro-spinal  system  acting  under  the 
influence  of  the  great  sympathetic,  the  character 
of  the  action  of  the  former  is  stamped  by  the  in- 
fluence of  the  latter. 

Grief  is  expressed  by  tears,  pallor,  loss  of  ap- 
petite— phenomena  which  belong  to  functions 
under  the  control  of  the  sympathetic;  by  sobbing, 
wringing  of  the  hands,  and  swaying  to  and  fro 
of  the  head  and  body — motions  which  are  under 
the  control  of  the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  system, 
and  which  are  rhythmical.  Excessive  grief  kills. 
I  have  known  of  one  death,  which  will  be  referred 
to  again  in  Chapter  V.,  and  which  was  plainly  due 
to  this  cause.  The  fatal  result  of  grief  is  due  to 
interference  with  nutrition  or  with  the  heart's  ac- 
tion, the  event  in  either  case  being  brought  about 
through  the  sympathetic. 

Hate  or  rage,  if  intense,  is  marked  by  pallor 
and  partial  arrest  of  the  heart's  action ;  if  mode- 
rate, by  flushing;  if  considerable,  but  still  not  in- 
tense, the  flushing  is  extreme,  the  face  becomes 
purple,  the  veins  of  the  neck  and  forehead  swell. 
Monkeys,  as   well  as   men,  are  said  to  redden 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL  NATURE,     m 

with  passion.  Some  authors  say  the  pupils  always 
contract  in  rage,  and  this  we  can  easily  under- 
stand; for  if  the  muscular  coat  of  the  arteries  be 
relaxed,  as  it  is  shown  to  be  by  the  distension  of 
the  vessels,  which  causes  the  flushing,  then  the 
radiating  fibres  of  the  iris,  which  are  also  supplied 
by  the  sympathetic,  would  be  equally  in  a  semi- 
paralyzed  state,  and  the  circular  fibres,  which 
are  supplied  by  the  third  nerve,  would  have  less 
than  usual  to  antagonize  their  ordinary  tonicity, 
and  the  pupils  would  contract.  In  great  rage 
there  is  often  trembling.  This  phenomenon  I 
shall  consider  further  under  the  head  of  fear. 
The  above-mentioned  are  the  primary  signs  of 
rage,  and  they  are  all  functional  changes  effected 
through  the  sympathetic.  Other  signs  of  rage, 
such  as  snarling,  setting  the  teeth,  clenching  the 
fists,  are  manifestly  secondary.  They  result  from 
an  intention  in  ourselves,  or  in  our  ancestors,  to 
do  something  in  consequence  of  rage,  and  are  not 
the  direct  effect  of  the  passion  itself. 

The  disturbances  of  function  which  accompany 
fear  are  frequent  and  feeble  action  of  the  heart, 
pallor,  and  dilatation  of  the  pupils.  And  I  wish 
particularly  to  remark  that  whereas  in  rage  there 
is  flushing  of  the  face  and  contraction  of  the  pu- 
pils, as  I  have  shown  above,  in  fear  there  Is  pallor 
of  the  face  and  dilatation  of  the  pupils — the  mus- 
cular coats  of  the  arteries  and  the  radiating  fibres 


112  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

of  the  Iris,  being  both  supplied  by  the  sympa- 
thetic, are  both  stimulated  to  contract  under  the 
influence  of  terror,  and  are  both  relaxed  in  rage. 
In  fear  there  is  also  suppression  of  the  salivary 
and  gastric  secretions,  extreme  dryness  of  the 
mouth,  and  complete  abeyance  of  the  appetite; 
there  is  frequently  increase,  sometimes  very 
marked,  of  the  urinarv  and  Intestinal  secretions. 
Trembling  Is  one  of  the  most  characteristic 
signs  of  fear.  This  is  a  movement  of  the  volun- 
tary muscles  ;  but  It  is  not  a  voluntary  move- 
ment, the  will  having  no  control  whatever  over  it. 
Trembling  occurs  In  other  emotional  conditions 
besides  fear,  as  In  joy  and  rage.  The  shaking  of 
ague,  though  not  associated  with  any  emotional 
state,  is,  I  have  no  doubt,  closely  connected  with 
emotional  trembling.  No  author  with  whose 
works  I  am  acc^ualnted  gives  any  explanation  of 
this  phenomenon.  Were  I  to  attempt  an  expla- 
nation myself.  It  would  be  that  trembling  Is  the  pe- 
culiar movement  of  the  voluntary  muscular  tissue 
when  thrown  into  action,  not  by  Its  own  proper 
nervous  system,  the  cerebro-splnal,  but  by  the 
sympathetic.  And  I  would  argue  that  this  was 
the  correct  view  of  the  case — first,  because  it  is 
certain  that  trembling  occurs  when  the  sympa- 
thetic is  highly  excited;  secondly,  because  the 
cerebro-spinal  system  cannot,  as  far  as  we  know, 
cause  such  a  movement,  and  cannot  control  it 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   THE  MORAL  NATURE.     X13 

when  caused ;  and  thirdly,  because  of  its  peculiar 
rhythmical  character,  which  allies  it  to  other  move- 
ments originating  in  the  sympathetic. 

With  regard  to  the  sweating  of  great  fear  I^ 
have  no  explanation  to  give.  I  will  simply  remark 
that  when,  by  division  of  sympathetic  trunks, 
a  part  of  the  surface  is  to  a  great  extent  deprived 
of  its  connection  with  the  sympathetic  centres, 
that  part  of  the  surface  is  bathed  in  sweat. 

I  have  quoted  very  few  experiments  upon  the 
sympathetic  in  this  essay,  for  the  reason  that  I  put 
very  little  confidence  in  the  deductions  drawn 
from  them.  To  divide  large  sympathetic  trunks, 
or  to  remove  large  sympathetic  ganglia,  must 
cause  a  disturbance  of  the  general  system  which 
would  necessarily  mask  to  a  great  extent  the  pe- 
culiar effects  flowing  from  the  lesion  of  the  nerves 
operated  on  ;  and  any  one  who  has  paid  atten- 
tion to  the  literature  of  this  subject  cannot  have 
failed  to  notice  how  contradictory  are  the  posi- 
tions supposed  to  be  established  by  these  means. 
Without  denying  that  experiments  may  in  the  fu- 
ture throw  light  on  this  branch  of  physiology,  I 
think  it  is  safe  to  say  that  they  have  thrown  very 
little  upon  it  yet. 

If  there  is  one  fact  in  relation  to  the  functions 
of  the  great  sympathetic  better  established  than 
any  other,  it  is  that  this  nervous  system  controls 
the  process   of  nutrition.     Now,  \  it  us  consider 


114 


MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 


for  a  moment  what  a  curious  relationship  exists 
between  the  process  of  nutrition  and  the  habitual 
state  of  the  moral  nature.  The  best  observer 
of  man  that  ever  lived  on  this  planet  makes  Ccesar 
say  to  Antony  : 

"  Let  me  have  men  about  me  that  are  fat. 


Yond'  Cassius  hath  a  lean  and  hungry  look. 

He  thinks  too  much.     Such  men  are  dangerous." 

Shakespeare  says,  what  we  all  know,  that  men  In 
whom  dwell  a  preponderance  of  evil  passions, 
such  as  hate,  envy,  jealousy,  are,  as  a  rule,  ill 
nourished.  The  converse  of  this  is  as  noto- 
rious, so  that  fat  and  jolly  go  together  as  na- 
turally as  do  any  two  terms  in  the  language. 
Not  only  does  this  general  law  hold,  though  lia- 
ble to  many  exceptions  from  the  operation  of 
other  laws  interfering  with  it,  but  we  find  it 
equally  true  that  any  long-continued,  inordinate 
passion,  be  It  sexual  love,  hate,  envy,  or  grief,  is 
capable  of  Influencing  nutrition  in  a  marked  man- 
ner. Long-continued  thought  does  not  produce 
any  such  effect.  If  It  seems  to  do  so  sometirnes, 
It  Is  because  the  student  deprives  himself  of  air, 
exercise,  and  sleep,  In  his  ardent  devotion  to 
knowledge.  Newton  was  as  fat  when  he  finished 
the  Principia  as  when  he  began  It.  The  writ- 
ing of  the  Novum  Orgamim  did  not  reduce 
Bacon's  weight  a  pound.     Shakespeare,  In  whose 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  THE  MORAL  NATURE. 


"5 


Splendid  brain  fermented  all  the  ideas  of  his  time 
— and  it  was  a  time,  perhaps,  of  more  ideas  than 
the  present,  much  as  we  pride  ourselves  in  this 
respect — was  a  well-nourished  man.  The  moral 
natures  of  Newton  and  Bacon  were  calm  and 
serene.  Shakespeare's  heart  glowed  with  a  genu- 
ine love  of  humanity.  If  the  moral  nature  be, 
equally  with  the  intellectual,  a  function  of  some 
part  of  the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  system,  why 
are  the  undoubted  functions  of  the  great  sympa- 
thetic so  intimately  connected  with  the  former 
and  so  entirely  unconnected  with  the  latter  ? 

The  expression  of  the  emotions,  as  seen  above, 
is  divided  naturally  into  two  classes  of  phe- 
nomena. One  class  consists  of  disturbance  of 
functions  presided  over  by  the  sympathetic  ;  the 
other  of  disturbance  of  functions  presided  over 
by  the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  system.  Some 
years  ago,  while  reading  an  able  work  on  this 
subject,  I  was  much  struck  by  the  singular  in- 
genuity and  success  with  which  the  author  traces 
the  latter  class  of  phenomena  to  intentional  ac- 
tions in  remote  progenitors,  which  actions  had 
at  last  become  habitual,  or,  as  we  say,  instinctive, 
and  often,  under  changed  circumstances,  mean- 
ingless. While,  on  the  other  hand,  in  the  case 
of  the  former  class  of  phenomena,  cither  no  at- 
tempt was  made  to  trace  the  action,  or,  if  it  were 
made,  it  failed.    The  author  did  not  himself  seem 


Il6  MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 

.^ ,,  ,   ,  _  — * 

to  perceive  the  line  which  he  thus  unconsciously 
drew,  and  the  fact  of  his  not  seeing  it  makes  his 
indication  of  it  the  more  instructive.  It  seems 
to  me  that  t'  e  expression  of  the  emotions  should 
be  divided  into  two  great  classes  of  acts,  or, 
rather,  two  classes  of  alteration  of  functions — i.  e., 
alteration  of  functions  presided  over  by  the  sym- 
pathetic, and  alteration  of  functions  presided 
over  by  the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  system.  The 
first  class  of  phenomena  is  the  most  fundamental. 
It  consists  chiefly  in  alterations  of  secretion,  nu- 
trition, and  circulation.  The  alterations  of  secre- 
tion are  alterations  of  excess,  defect,  and  perver- 
.sion.  Alterations  of  excess  are  seen  in  the  pro- 
fuse lachrymation  of  grief,  in  profuse  secretion  of 
the  intestinal  glands  and  kidneys  in  fear.  Al- 
terations of  defect  are  seen  in  arrest  of  the 
salivary  and  other  digestive  secretions  in  fear, 
grief,  and  rage.  Alteration  of  perversion  is  seen 
specially  in  the  case  of  the  mammary  secretion, 
which  is  often  altered  in  rage  and  fear  so  as  to  dis- 
agree with  the  infant,  and  sometimes  sufficiently 
to  cause  the  death  of  the  child.  The  alterations 
of  nutrition  are  alterations  of  excess  and  defect. 
Alteration  of  excess  is  seen  when  a  person  gains 
weight  under  the  influence  of  tranquil  happiness, 
while  all  other  circumstances  of  the  person's  life 
remain  the  same.  Alteration  of  defect  is  seen 
when  a  person  loses  weight  from  the  influence  of 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  THE  MORAL  NATURE.      uy 

any  depressing  or  inordinate  passion.  The  al- 
terations of  circulation  are  alterations  of  excess, 
defect,  and  perversion.  Alterations  of  excess 
are  seen  in  the  excessive  action  of  the  heart  in 
rage,  fear,  or  sudden  joy,  in  the  flushing  of  joy 
or  love,  the  reddening  of  rage,  or  the  blushing  of 
shame.  Alterations  of  defect  are  seen  in  the 
pausing  of  the  heart  in  sudden  terror,  the  depres- 
sion of  the  heart's  action  in  continuous  grief,  and 
in  the  pallor  of  fear.  Alteration  of  the  circula- 
tion by  perversion  is  seen  in  intermittent  cardiac 
action  from  excessive  fear  or  rage. 

The  second  class  of  alteration  of  functions — that 
is,  alteration  of  functions  presided  over  by  the 
cerebro-spinal  nervous  system — may  be  divided 
roughly  into  alteration  of  functions  presided  over 
by  the  cord,  and  alteration  of  functions  presided 
over  by  the  brain.  In  the  first  class  are  a  large 
number  of  quite  meaningless  acts,  such  as  laugh- 
ter, sobbing  and  sighing,  clapping  the  hands  In  joy, 
wringing  them  In  grief,  stamping  the  feet  in  rage, 
swaying  the  head  and  body  in  despair.  The  two 
chief  things  to  notice  about  these  acts  are  that 
they  are  rhythmical,  and  that  they  are  without  in- 
tention. Now,  if  the  cord  was  prompted  to  ex- 
cite the  muscles  to  these  acts  by  the  brain,  that 
being  the  seat  of  the  emotion,  the  probability 
seems  to  be  that  the  acts  would  have  some  Inten- 
tion underlying  them,  and  I  see  no  reason  why 


Ii8  MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 

they  should  be  rhythmical.  But  if  the  great  sym- 
pathetic is  the  seat  of  the  emotion,  and  if  it 
prompts  the  cord  to  excite  the  muscles  to  these 
actions,  then  we  can  see  both  why  the  acts  should 
be  meaningless  and  why  they  should  be  rhythmi- 
cal. Lastly,  alteration  of  functions  presided  over 
by  the  brain  are  acts,  as  I  think,  equally  prompted 
by  the  great  sympathetic,  but  by  the  great  sym- 
pathetic acting  through  the  higher  centres  of  the 
cerebro-spinal  nervous  system — that  is  to  say, 
through  consciousness.  In  this  class  of  actions 
the  intellect  intervenes  between  the  emotion  and 
the  act.  These  acts,  performed  by  many  genera- 
tions inrsuccession,  and  under  changing  circum- 
stances, are  apt  to  become  meaningless,  though 
they  must  have  all  had  a  meaning  at  one  time ; 
they  also,  by  constant  repetition,  become  involun- 
tary and  automatic.  Such  an  act  is  the  sneer  of 
scorn  or  anger,  in  which  the  canines  are  partially 
uncovered — an  act  which  originated  when  the 
canines  were  used  by  our  ancestors  under  the  in- 
fluence of  such  passions.  The  involuntary  set- 
ting of  the  teeth  and  clenching  of  the  hands  in 
rage,  when  there  is  no  intention  to  enter  into  a 
physical  contest — when,  perhaps,  the  object  of 
the  passion  is  miles  away — is  a  similar  act.  But 
though  the  acts  of  the  class  now  under  considera- 
tion may  become  meaningless,  as  shown  above, 
as  a  class  they  are  not  meaningless  acts,  for  this 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  THE  MORAL  NATURE. 


119 


class  comprises  most  of  the  acts  of  every-day  life, 
the  majority  of  which  are  prompted  more  or  less 
remotely  by  some  passion  or  emotion.  Now, 
these  acts  as  a  class  are  remote  from  the  moral 
state  which  excites  to  their  performance,  while 
the  actions  of  the  cord,  and  still  more  of  the 
sympathetic,  are  instant  upon  the  occurrence  of 
the  passion  or  emotion,  showing  that  alteration  of 
functions  presided  over  by  the  great  sympathetic 
is,  so  to  speak,  closest  to  the  emotion  ;  that  altera- 
tion of  function  presided  over  by  the  spinal  cord 
is  next  closest  to  the  emotion ;  and  that  altera- 
tion of  function  presided  over  by  the  brain  is 
most  remote  from  the  enlotion.  All  these  con- 
siderations tend  to  prove  that  the  seat  of  the 
emotions  is  the  ganglia  of  the  great  sympathetic 
and  not  the  convolutions  of  the  brain. 

For,  consider — if  the  brain  was  the  organ  of  the 
moral  nature,  as  it  is  of  the  intellectual  nature, 
would  not  conscious  intentional  acts  and  ideation- 
al changes  be  the  most  instant  and  fundamental 
effects  consequent  upon  the  occurrence  of  a  given 
emotional  state  ?  Would  not  meaningless  actions, 
having  their  immediate  source  in  the  spinal  cord 
— such  as  laughing,  sobbing,  stamping — come 
after  these  in  degree  of  directness  ?  And  would 
not  actions  or  alteration  of  functions  having  their 
immediate  source  in  the  ganglia  of  the  great 
sympathetic — such  as  contraction  and  relaxation 


120  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

of  unstrlped  muscle  and  alterations  of  secretion — 
would  not  these  be  less  instant  and  direct  than 
the  other  two  classes  of  actions  instead  of  being 
markedly  more  so? 

In  conclusion,  were  I  to  attempt  to  draw  a 
comparison  in  a  few  words  between  the  functions 
of  the  cerebro-splnal  nervous  system  and  those  of 
the  great  sympathetic,  I  should  say  that  whereas 
the  cerebro-splnal  nervous  system  is  an  enormous 
and  complex  sensory  motor  apparatus,  with  an 
immense  ganglion,  the  cerebrum,  whose  function 
is  ideation,  superimposed  upon  Its  sensory  tract, 
and  another,  the  cerebellum,  whose  function  is 
the  coordination  of  motion,  superimposed  upon 
its  motor  tract,  so  the  great  sympathetic  is  also  a 
sensory  motor  system  without  any  superimposed 
ganglia,  and  its  sensory  and  motor  functions  do 
not  differ  from  the  corresponding  functions  of  the 
cerebro-splnal  system  more  than  its  cells  and  fibres 
differ  from  those  of  this  latter  system,  Its  efferent 
or  motor  function  being  expended  upon  unstrlped 
muscle,  and  its  afferent  or  sensory  function  being 
that  peculiar  kind  of  sensation  which  we  call 
emotion.  And  as  there  Is  no  such  thing  as  coor- 
dination of  emotion,  as  there  is  coordination  of 
motion  and  sensation,  so  in  the  realm  of  the 
moral  nature  there  is  no  such  thing  as  learning, 
though  there  is  development.  And  the  moral 
nature  of  the  Ignorant  man  or  uneducated  woman 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  THE  MORAL  NATURE.      121 

may  be,  and  often  Is,  superior  to  the  average 
moral  nature  of  the  cultivated  members  of  our 
race. 

Upon  this  view  of  the  relative  functions  of  the 
two  great  nervous  systems,  the  only  efferent  func- 
tion of  the  great  sympathetic  is  stimulation  of 
unstriped  muscle  ;  and  we  should  have  to  view 
its  influence  upon  secretion  and  nutrition  as  due 
to  its  power  of  contracting,  or  allowing  to  dilate, 
the  coats  of  arteries.  And  this  is  in  all  pro- 
bability very  near  the  truth.  Looked  at  in  this 
way,  the  bulk  and  complexity  of  structure  of 
each  nervous  system  seems  to  correspond  with 
the  scope  of  its  supposed  functions  ;  for  the  sen- 
sory motor  functions  of  the  cerebro-spinal  sys- 
tem, including  ideation  and  coordination  of  mo- 
tion, would  be  as  much  in  excess  of  the  functions 
of  the  great  sympathetic  nervous  system  in 
amount  and  complexity  as  are  the  ganglia  of 
the  former  in  excess  of  those  of  the  latter  in  com- 
plexity of  structure  and  bulk. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

IS   THE   MORAL   NATURE   A   FIXED   QUANTITY? 


**  Mein  Freund,  die  Zeiten  der  Vergangenheit 
Sind  uns  ein  Buch  mit  siebeu  Siegeln  ; 
Was  ihr  den  Geist  der  Zeiten  heist, 
Das  ist  im  Grund  der  Herren  eigner  Geist, 
In  dem  die  Zeiten  sich  bespiegeln." — Goethe. 


It  is  the  purpose  of  this  chapter  to  determine 
whether  the  moral  nature  is  or  is  not  a  fixed 
quantity ;  that  is  to  say,  have  the  successive  gene- 
rations of  men  the  same  capacity  of  emotion  ? 
And  not  only  so,  but  have  they  the  same  capacity 
of  each  of  the  functions  of  the  moral  nature  ? 
As  before,  we  will  keep  to  the  four  central  func- 
tions— Love,  Faith,  Hate,  Fear.  Does  the  ave- 
rage modern  man  of  a  civilized  nation  love,  trust, 
hate,  and  fear  as  much  as  and  not  more  than  the 
average  man  of  the  nearest  approach  to  a  civil- 
ized nation  of  (say)  five  thousand  years  ago  ?  Is 
the  moral  nature  now  undergoing  modification  ? 
Will  the  average  man  of  five  thousand  years 
hence  love,  trust,  hate,  and  fear  equally  with  the 
average  man  of  to-day  ?  I  cannot  find  that  this 
question  has  ever,  so  far,  been  squarely  faced  and 
honestly  studied.  It  seems  to  have  been  taken 
for  granted  that  man's  moral  nature  is  a  fixed 
quantity.  What  is  the  reason  of  this  ?  There 
are  several  reasons  for  it.  In  the  first  place,  let 
us  put  the  question  somewhat  differently,  so  as  to 

look  at  it  from  the  ordinary  point  of  view.     Let 

125 


126  MAN'S  MORAL    MATURE. 

US  ask,  Is  the  world  becoming  more  moral  ?  The 
former  question  underlies  this  latter  question,  and 
the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  answering  the  latter 
question  will  also  be  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
answering  the  former  question.  What  are  these 
difficulties  ?  The  first  difficulty  is  that  men  are 
by  no  means  agreed  as  to  what  constitutes  moral 
advance.  Many  would  say  that  it  consists  in  a 
greater  number  and  amount  of  good  actions  per- 
formed. The  great  difficulty  about  this  answer 
is  that  people  are  very  far  from  unanimous  as  to 
what  constitutes  good  actio'^'s.  To  take  some 
extreme  cases  of  divergence  of  opinion  on  this 
point,  it  may  be  mentioned  that  a  Thug  con- 
sidered assassination  a  good  action  ;  an  Indian 
widow  thought  burning  herself  equally  good ;  a 
Figian  has  no  doubt  of  the  propriety  of  killing 
his  father  or  mother  when  they  begin  to  grovr 
old  ;  the  American  Indian  has  always  looked  upon 
horse-stealing  and  scalp-taking  as  most  laudable 
acts ;  our  ancestors  who  lived  near  the  border 
line  between  England  and  Scotland  held  very 
similar  views  ;  the  early  Inquisitors  are  said  to 
have  been  among  the  best  of  men,  and  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  they  thought  they  were  doing 
good  service  to  humanity  in  founding  and  main- 
taining the  Inquisition,  yet  a  great  many,  both 
at  the  time  and  since,  have  differed  from  them 
very  widely  upon  this  point. 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?      127 

Another  definition  of  moral  advance  would 
probably  be  that  it  consists  in  an  increase  of  cer- 
tain qualities,  half  moral  and  half  intellectual, 
such  as  charity,  loyalty,  hospitality,  generosity. 
This  definition  would  be  open  to  the  same  objec- 
tion as  the  last,  inasmuch  as  these  cjualities  are 
of  such  a  practical  and  concrete  nature  that  they 
can  scarcely  be  considered  apart  from  the  actions 
which  directly  belong  to  them ;  and  as  soon  as  we 
get  into  the  domain  of  action  there  will  be  a 
great  diversity  of  opinion  as  to  whether  the  ac- 
tion is  good  '.r  not.  It  has  often  been  argued,  for 
instance,  that  charity  considered  as  an  action  does 
more  harm  than  good,  and  a  strong  case  may  be 
made  out  on  this  side.  It  is  said  that  it  tends  to 
destroy  the  feeling  of  independence  in  the  recipi- 
ent, and  that  it  is  very  injurious  to  him  to  have 
this  feeling  impaired  ;  it  is  further  said  to  dis- 
courage industry  and  to  encourage  servility  in  the 
dependent  class.  It  is  said  again  that  the  prac- 
tice of  this  habit  injures  those  who  practice  it — 
that  it  increases  their  self-esteem — that  it  makes 
them  self-righteous — that  it  [)roduces  and  deepens 
in  their  minds  the  feeling  that  they  belong  to  a 
superior  class  of  humanity  to  that  to  which  those 
relieved  by  them  belong — and  it  is  said  that  this 
feeling  is  antagonistic  to  the  feeling  of  universal 
brotherhood  which  is  one  of  our  highest  ideals 
in  the  field  of  morality.  ^      . 


128  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE, 

Parallel  arguments  have  been  used  against  loy- 
alty. It  is  said  that  this  feeling  has  often  enabled 
kings  to  carry  on  unjust  wars,  which  wars  have 
done  incalculable  evil — that  it  has  often  blinded 
the  eyes  of  the  people  of  one  nation  to  superiority 
in  the  people  of  other  nations  in  matters  of  re- 
ligion, philosophy,  arts,  mechanical  inventions, 
and  many  other  things,  which  better  views  and 
processes  they  might  have  adopted  to  their  great 
advantage  had  they  not  been  so  blinded.  Loy- 
alty, indeed,  though  conceived  by  many  to  be  one 
of  the  superior  virtues,  is  considered  by  others,  as 
well  qualified  to  judge,  as  a  form  of  selfishness 
and  not  a  virtue  at  alL  Similar  considerations 
apply  to  the  other  so-called  virtues  of  this  class. 
What,  then,  would  constitute  moral  advance  ? 
This  will  appear  presently.  All  I  wish  to  show 
here  is  that  men  are  not  agreed  upon  this  point, 
and  that  being  the  case  they  could  hardly  agree 
upon  there  being  such  a  thing  as  moral  advance 
at  all. 

In  the  second  place,  when  the  moral  condition 
of  a  people  is  low,  their  ideal  of  moral  perfection 
is  also  low,  and  as  fast  as  their  actual  moral  state 
improves,  or  even  faster,  their  moral  ideal  ad- 
vances. So  that  it  is  a  fact  that  the  lower  or 
more  degraded  an  individual,  a  tribe,  or  a  nation 
may  be,  the  less  do  they  think  about  their  moral 
condition,  and  the  more  are  they  satisfied  with  it 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?      129 

when  they  do  concern  themselves  about  it.  And 
whereas,  among  people  of  refined  habits  and  vir- 
tuous lives,  it  is  not  uncommon  to  find  men  and 
women  ready  to  acknowledge  themselves  the 
vilest  sinners,  this  feeling  I  believe  does  not  ex- 
ist, even  as  an  exceptional  phenomenon,  among 
barbarous  tribes,  such  as  the  Figians,  Australians, 
or  lower  tribes  of  Africans.  The  ideal  of  moral 
perfection  among  them  being  very  little  higher  than 
their  actual  moral  condition,  as  shown  by  the 
character  of  the  gods  they  imagine  to  exist,  there 
is  no  such  wide  difference,  as  v/ith  us,  between 
how  they  really  live  and  how  they  feel  they 
ought  to  live ;  what  we  call  conscience,  therefore, 
troubles  them  much  less  than  it  does  us.  And 
as  this  law  holds  good  with  individuals  as  well  as 
with  races  and  nations,  so  it  may  be  laid  down  as 
a  rule  which  admits  of  very  few  exceptions  that 
the  really  good  man  suffers  much  more  from  the 
upbraidings  of  his  conscience  than  does  the  most 
depraved  criminal.  The  tendency  of  this  law 
is  plainly  to  conceal  irom  the  higher  races  any 
advance  in  morality  which  they  may  have  made, 
and  to  prevent  the  advance  from  being  recog- 
nized. 

A  third  reason  why  an   advance   in   morality, 
supposing  it  to  exist,  would  be  difficult  to  recog- 
nize is  that  we  have  very  imperfect  means  of 
judging  of  the  degree  of  moral  elevation  attained 
6* 


I30  MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 

by  our  ancestors  at  any  given  past  time.  We 
know  tolerably  well,  in  the  case  of  several  ancient 
nations,  what  they  thought  and  what  they  did  ; 
we  know  also  what  they  taught  in  the  way  of 
morality,  but  as  for  their  moral  state  we  know 
very  little  about  it.  What  I  mean  by  their 
moral  state  being  their  habitual  state  of  feeling 
toward  one  another — toward  their  wives  and 
husbands — their  children  and  parents — toward 
their  slaves  and  the  lower  animals — toward  ex- 
ternal nature  and  their  gods — toward  death — 
and  generally  toward  the  infinite  unknown  which 
surrounded  them  as  it  surrounds  us.  About  this, 
the  habitual  state  of  their  feelings  toward  their 
entire  surroundings,  which  in  the  aggregate 
makes  up  a  man's  moral  state  or  condition,  we 
can  learn  very  little  whether  we  study  the  ancient 
Jews,  Greeks,  Romans,  Hindoos,  or  Egyptians. 
In  the  case  of  all  these  ancient  people,  the  gene- 
ral impression  is  that  their  moral  condition  was 
lower  than  our  own,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that 
this  is  true.  Still,  many  men  who  ought  to  be 
well  qualified  to  judge,  as  far  as  the  study  of  ex- 
tant records  will  qualify  any  one,  will  doubt  the 
correctness  of  this  view.  If,  instead  of  going 
back  so  far,  we  make  the  comparison  between 
the  present  time  and  times  of  which  the  records 
are  more  complete  than  in  the  case  of  those 
referred  to,  then   the  interval  is  not  sufficiently 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?      131 

long  to  allow  of  any  considerable  change  having 
taken  place.  We  could  not  expect  for  instance 
that  there  would  be  a  marked  advance  in  man's 
moral  state  since  the  time  of  Elizabeth  ;  manners 
and  fashions  have  changed  since  then — men  feel 
very  differently  now  in  many  respects  from  the 
way  men  felt  then — many  of  the  associations 
between  moral  states  and  ideas  have  altered  since 
that  day,  some  absolutely,  some  only  in  degree 
— but,  on  the  whole,  very  few  would  say  that  m.en 
felt  less  then  than  they  do  now,  or  on  the  whole 
felt  less  nobly.  Many  would  say  that  the  men 
of  that  age  felt  more  than  we,  and  more  nobly. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  question:  "Is  the 
moral  nature  a  fixed  quantity  ? "  has  not  been 
answered  because  it  has  not  been  properly  asked. 
The  usual  form  of  the  question  is  :  "  Is  mankind 
becoming  better?"  or  "Are  men  more  or  less 
moral  now  than  they  were  formerly?"  Asked 
in  this  way  the  question  is  always  understood  to 
involve,  if  not  to  deal  principally  with,  acts  as 
well  as  feelings ;  and  even,  singularly  enough,  in 
dealing  with  the  question  in  this  form,  ideas  of 
morality  have  been  mistaken  for  morality  itself. 
In  thus  dealing  with  the  moral  nature  combined 
with  the  active  and  intellectual  natures,  the  prob- 
lem becomes  insoluble  from  its  extreme  com- 
plexity. But  it  has  been  shown  above  (p.  14 
ei  seg.)  that  neither  the  active  nature  nor  the  in- 


132 


MAN'S  MORAL   NATURE, 


tellectual  nature  has  anything  to  do  with  morality 
in  any  fundamental  sense — that,  in  other  words, 
they  are  apart  from  and  outside  of  the  moral 
nature.  Let  us  then  ask  this  question  so  as  to 
confine  both  question  and  answer  within  the 
scope  of  the  moral  nature  itself,  and  let  us  see 
if  in  that  way  we  shall  not  be  more  successful 
in  answering  it.  As  before,  we  will  consider, 
for  the  sake  of  simplicity,  that  love,  faith,  hate, 
and  fear  constitute  the  whole  of  the  moral  na- 
ture, and  even  if  they  do  not  they  constitute  so 
large  a  part  of  it  that  the  question  and  answer 
can  be  based  on  them  just  as  well  as  if  there 
were  no  other  moral  states.  The  question  then 
is:  Are  the  quantities  of  each  and  all  of  these 
elements  fixed  ?  Do  men  on  the  whole  to-day 
love,  trust,  hate,  and  fear  as  much  as  and  no 
more  than  they  did  in  the  past?  And  will  they 
in  the  future — the  conditions  of  existence  being 
the  same — always  go  on  loving,  trusting,  hating, 
and  fearing  as  much  as  and  no  more  than  at 
present?  This  question,  I  believe,  admits  of  a 
reliable  answer. 

The  first  thing  which  we  have  to  take  into  ac- 
count is  the  relation  of  the  four  functions  of  the 
moral  nature  to  one  another.  It  is  plain  at  the 
outset  that  they  constitute  two  pairs,  and  that  the 
two  elements  of  each  pair  are  directly  antagonis- 
tic t6  one  another ;  these  two  pairs  are  love  and 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?      133 

hate,  and  faith  and  fear.  Now,  given  a  moral 
nature  of  a  certain  scope,  and  you  cannot  increase 
love  in  it  without  lessening  hate,  both  relatively 
and  absolutely.  So  hate  cannot  be  increased 
without  lessening  love,  or  increase  of  faith  can- 
not take  place  without  lessening  fear,  or  increase 
of  fear  without  lessening  faith.  Then,  again,  love 
and  faith  are  related  to  one  another  by  affinity, 
so  that  one  of  them  cannot,  except  as  an  excep- 
tional phenomenon,  be  increased  without  increas- 
ing at  the  same  time  the  other.  The  same  may 
be  said  of  hate  and  fear. 

There  are  three  modes  by  which  we  may  at- 
tempt to  trace  the  moral  nature  through  the  ages 
during  which  man  has  inhabited  the  earth  with 
the  view  of  forming  an  opinion  as  to  whether  it 
alters  in  the  course  of  successive  generations,  and 
if  so  in  what  manner  it  alters.  The  first  is  the  di- 
rect method,  and  is,  perhaps,  the  most  unsatisfac- 
tory of  the  three  :  it  consists  of  going  back  in  time, 
by  the  aid  of  documents  and  works  of  art,  and 
by  the  aid  of  all  means  which  are  accessible  to  us, 
and  tracing  the  actual  development  itself.  The 
second  consists  in  examining  the  various  races 
of  man  :  it  rests  on  the  supposition  that  in  the 
course  of  development  the  higher  races  of  to-day 
have  passed  through  the  same  or  very  similar 
phases  to  those   represented  at  the  present  time 


134  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE.    • 

by  the  various  inferior  tribes  and  races  of  men  ; 
it  is  probable, that  a  rough  approximation  to  the 
real  progress  made  may  be  observed  in  this  way. 
The  third  mode  consists  in  observing  the  mental 
development  of  the  child  from  birth  to  maturity: 
this  method  draws  its  authority  from  the  theory 
that,  as  the  development  of  man  in  his  intra- 
uterine life  is  an  abridged  and  somewhat  imper- 
fect representation  of  the  development  of  animal 
life  from  the  lowest  forms  of  life  up  to  man,  so 
the  mental  development  of  the  individual  man  is 
a  rough  representation  of  that  of  the  race.  By 
a  careful  examination,  as  far  as  it  can  be  carried 
out,  of  these  three  lines  of  indications,  by  com- 
paring the  results  reached  in  each,  and  by  check- 
ing the  one  by  the  other,  a  history  which  would 
approximate  more  or  less  closely  to  the  truth 
could  no  doubt  be  written;  a  history  which,  in  its 
great  outlines,  could  not  but  be  essentially  true. 
It  is  far  from  being  my  intention  to  write  such  a 
history  as  is  here  indicated.  Such  an  attempt,  to 
be  made  without  extravagant  presumption,  would 
suppose  on  the  part  of  whoever  made  it  infinitely 
greater  learning  than  I  am  possessed  of.  Neither 
is  it  necessary  for  my  present  purpose  to  write 
such  a  history  here — a  few  hints,  a  few  sugges- 
tions, are  all  that  I  can  give,  and  I  believe  they 
will  be  sufficient  both  to  make  plain  my  line  of 
argument  and  also  to  support  it  sufficiently. 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?      13^ 

In  the  first  place,  then,  let  us  see  what  we  can 
learn  from  an  examination  of  the  moral  nature 
of  our  ancestors.  Those  of  us  who  adopt  the 
development  hypothesis  would  begin  and  end  this 
present  inquiry  with  a  comparison  of  man  with 
one  of  the  higher  inferior  animals.  He  would 
show  that  the  moral  nature,  as  a  whole,  was  much 
less  developed  in  the  highest  of  these  than  in 
man  ;  he  would  show  that  love  and  faith  are  cer- 
tainly much  less  prominent  in  them  ;  and  that 
hate  and  fear,  though  perhaps  absolutely  less  in 
amount  than  in  man,  are,  relatively  to  love  and 
faith,  much  more  developed  in  the  lower  animals 
than  in  man.  If  man  has  descended  from  a  lower 
form,  this  would  settle  the  question  which  we  are 
now  considering ;  for  when  man  began  to  exist  as 
man,  his  moral  nature  would  be  in  an  interme- 
diate state  between  that  of  the  higher  animals  and 
that  of  the  lower  savages ;  therefore,  since  he  be- 
came man,  his  moral  nature  must  have  altered. 
But,  passing  over  this  argument,  let  us  attempt 
a  comparison  between  the  moral  nature  of  the 
most  advanced  races  of  to-day  and  the  moral  na- 
ture of,  say,  the  Aryan  people  of  the  Ganges  in 
the  time  of  Guatama,  of  the  Greeks  toward  the 
end  of  the  fifth  century  before  Christ,  and  of  the 
Jews  from  the  time  of  Saul  and  David  to  the 
time  of  the  prophets.  And  in  making  these  com- 
parisons let  us  consider,  as  far  as  our  data  will 


136 


MAN'S  MORAL   NATURE. 


allow  us,  the  attitude  of  the  four  fundamental 
moral  functions  toward — (i)  Husband,  wife,  fa- 
ther, mother,  children ;  (2)  The  individual's  own 
nation  or  race  ;  (3)  Mankind  at  large ;  (4)  Ene- 
mies ;  (5)  The  lower  animals ;  (6)  External  na- 
ture— as  scenery,  sun,  moon  and  stars,  spring, 
flowers,  and  also  toward  the  real  or  supposed  hos- 
tile aspects  of  nature,  such  as  storm,  earthquake, 
eclipse  ;  (7)  The  unknowable,  as  shown  by  the 
character  of  the  gods  which  they  carved  out  of  it,  or 
with  which  they  peopled  it ;  and  (8)  Toward  death. 

I.  Buddhism. — In  a  given  moral  nature  of  a 
certain  total  volume  the  less  faith  there  is  the  more 
fear  there  is ;  and  the  more  fear  there  is  the  less 
faith  there  is.  The  same  is  true  of  love  and  hate. 
Now  it  is  certain  that  there  are  races  of  men  upon 
the  earth  in  whom  fear  preponderates  over  faith, 
so  that  the  gods  which  they  imagine  to  exist  are 
more  evil  than  good,  and  their  supposed  condition 
after  death  is  more  to  be  dreaded  than  desired. 
It  is  equally  certain  that  there  are  upon  the  earth 
now  races  of  men  of  whom  the  reverse  of  this  is 
true,  so  that  the  god  or  gods  which  they  imagine 
to  exist  are  more  good  than  evil,  and  their  sup- 
posed condition  after  death  is  more  to  be  desired 
than  dreaded.  Now  suppose  that  at  a  given 
period  of  the  world's  history  all  men,  or  all  the 
men  of  a  given  nation,  were  in  the  former  of  these 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?     137 

conditions,  and  supposing  further  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  development  of  the  moral  nature, 
and  that  the  moral  nature  of  this  nation  was 
on  the  whole  advancing,  then  there  must  come 
a  time  when  they  would  reach  the  line  which 
divides  preponderance  of  faith  from  preponder- 
ance of  fear.  The  moral  progress  of  the  world 
or  of  a  nation  is  intermittent.  It  is  made,  a  stride 
now  and  a  stride  again,  as  the  men  appear  who 
are  capable  of  initiating  advance.  A  given  people 
might  either  pause  at  the  neutral  line,  or  step  from 
just  below  it  to  just  above  it.  There  has  occurred 
at  least  one  case  in  the  world's  history  in  which  a 
large  section  of  the  human  race  has  taken  its  sta- 
tion for  a  time  just  on  the  line  indicated.  Peach- 
ing this  line  as  they  did  from  below,  the  attainment 
of  it  was  to  them  a  moral  elevation  ;  and  not  only 
so,  but  the  highest  moral  elevation  which  they 
were  at  that  time  capable  of.  So  that  what,  to  the 
higher  races  of  to-day,  seems  so  inconceivable,  was 
to  them  a  living,  realized  fact ;  and  nirvdna — anni- 
hilation— was  their  last  and  best  ideal  of  what  the 
universe  had  in  store  for  man.  This  was  the  step 
made  by  Guatama  twenty-five  hundred  years  ago  in 
northern  Hindustan — a  step  which  has  been  fol- 
lowed by  hundreds  of  millions  of  men  and  women 
for  now  twenty-five  centuries.  Buddhism  sprang 
from  its  antecedent  religion,  Brahmanism,  which 
was  itself  a  direct  descendant  o-  a  continuation  of 


138  MAN'S  MORAL   NATURE. 

the  religion  of  the  Aryan  people  before  their  sepa- 
ration and  divergence  to  south  and  west.  I  have 
not  been  able  to  find  the  exact  value  of  this  initial 
religion,  but  for  many  reasons  I  am  satisfied  that 
it  was  lower  than  Buddhism — that  it  represented 
less  faith  and  more  fear — that  its  gods,  in  the  aggre- 
gate, were  more  evil  than  good,  and  that  the  con- 
dition anticipated  after  death,  even  in  the  case  of 
the  best  men,  was  more  to  be  feared  than  desired 
— that,  in  fact,  it  was  the  projection  of  a  moral 
nature  in  which  fear  preponderated  over  faith. 
Every  new  religion  derives  its  authority  from,  and 
establishes  its  hold  upon  man  by,  the  fact  that  it 
represents  a  moral  advance,  that  it  is  a  projection 
into  the  unknov/n  of  a  superior  and  more  assured 
hope.  This  law  has  no  exceptions.  In  the  nature 
of  the  case  it  could  not  have  any  ;  for  no  people  or 
nation,  having  attained  a  certain  degree  of  assu- 
rance as  to  the  friendliness  to  mankind  of  the  gov- 
erning power  of  the  universe,  will  willingly  follow 
the  man  who  tells  them  that  it  is  less  friendly  than 
they  thought  it.  But  we  are  all  ready  to  follow 
the  man,  if  we  can,  who,  having  more  faith  than  we 
have,  inspires  us  with  the  confidence  to  believe 
that  the  universe  is  more  friendly  to  us  than  we 
supposed.  A  parallel  fact  to  the  birth  of  Bud- 
dhism was  the  development  of  Zoroastrianism  from 
the  same  primitive  stock,  that  is  from  the  initial 
Aryan  faith.  This  religion  seems  to  have  had  almost 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?      139 

exactly  the  same  moral  value  as  Buddhism,  for 
whereas  this  last  placed  its  highest  hope  in  nir- 
vana,  Zoroastrianism  represented  the  government 
of  the  universe  to  be  in  the  hands  of  a  good  and 
an  evil  principle,  of  which  neither  was  stronger 
than  the  other.  Now,  a  plus  and  a  minus  quantity 
which  are  equal  to  one  another  are  equal  to  zero  ; 
fiirvAna  is  also  equal  to  zero  ;  so  that  from  our 
present  point  of  view  Buddhism  and  Zoroastrian- 
ism are  each,  morally  considered,  equal  to  zero, 
and  are  therefore  equal  to  one  another.  I  need 
not  insist  upon  the  fact  that,  speaking  generally, 
all  the  religions  which  have  originated  subsequent- 
ly to  Buddhism,  and  which  have  been  held  by  the 
foremost  races  of  men,  such  as  the  various  forms 
of  Christianity  and  Mahometanism,  all  differ  from 
Buddhism  and  Zoroastrianism  in  these  two  essen- 
tial particulars — first,  that  they  declare  the  good 
power  or  principle  in  the  government  of  the  uni- 
verse to  be  stronger  than  the  evil  power;  and, 
secondly,  that  they  represent  the  state  beyond  the 
grave  to  be,  for  the  good  man,  more  to  be  desired 
than  feared.  The  meanincf  of  this,  of  course,  is 
that  with  advanced  nations  in  modern  times,  that 
is,  speaking  generally,  in  the  last  two  thousand 
years,  the  scale  has  turned,  and  faith  is  now  in  the 
human  mind  in  excess  of  fear,  and  consequently 
the  ideas  projected  into  the  unknown  world  by 
man's   moral   nature,  are,  on  the  whole,  a  plus 


I40  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

quantity  instead  of  being",  as  with  the  lower  races, 
a  minus  quantity,  or  simply  equal  to  zero.  I  have 
no  data  with  which  to  compare  the  moral  nature 
of  the  earl)^  Buddhists  with  the  moral  nature  of  the- 
modern  advanced  races,  except  in  this  particular  of 
the  essential  value  of  the  religion  possessed  by 
each.  I  shall,  therefore,  pass  on  to  the  considera- 
tion of  the  moral  elevation  attained  by  the  Greeks 
of  about  the  time  of  Pericles. 

II.  Greece. — The  moral  nature  of  the  ancient 
Greeks  was  characterized  by  exaltation  of  love, 
a  proportionate  dwarfing  of  hate,  a  considerably 
less  development  of  faith  than  of  love,  and  a  con- 
sequent preponderance  of  fear.  The  excess  of 
love  over  faith  is  shown  principally  by  their  ex- 
traordinary achievements  in  the  arts  on  the  one 
hand,  and  by  the  low  type  of  their  religion  on 
the  other.  The  excess  of  fear  over  hate  is  shown 
chiefly  by  the  character  of  their  wars,  and  the 
incidents  springing  out  of  these  wars.  Let  us 
consider  very  briefly  these  four  points. 

In  poetry  (not  music),  sculpture,  architecture, 
oratory,  and  painting  (?),  the  Greeks  of  the  fifth 
century  before  Christ  reached,  perhaps,  as  high  a 
level  as  has  been  reached  in  the  whole  history  of 
the  world,  and  a  far  higher  level  than  had  been 
reached  elsewhere  up  to  that  time.  Their  family 
affections,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  appear  to  have 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?     j^i 

been  well  developed.  Friendship  with  them  be- 
tween men  not  connected  by  blood  seems  to 
have  reached  a  very  high  point.  This  last  fact 
is  probably  largely  due  to  the  curious  connection 
which  existed  with  them  between  friendship  and 
sexual  love,  by  which  a  certain  amount  of  the  '' 
latter  was  carried  over  to  the  account  of  the  for- 
mer. Of  their  feeling  toward  animals  little  is 
known.  They  had  far  less  love  of  nature  than 
the  people  of  modern  nations. 

Their  want  of  faith  is  shown  in  their  defi- 
cient trust  of  one  another — a  want  which  led  to 
their  ruin,  for  it  prevented  them  from  combining. 
But  above  all  this  v/ant  is  shown  by  their  con- 
ceptions of  man's  state  after  death,  and  of  the 
central  fact  of  the  universe — that  is,  of  the  charac- 
ter of  their  gods.  Their  Hades  was  a  gloomy, 
cheerless  realm,  the  supreme  governorship  of 
which  was  not  equal  in  value  to  the  earthly  life  of 
a  slave  ;  and  their  gods,  while  careful  of  their  own 
honor  and  service,  were  careless  of  their  human 
worshipers,  and  while  not  cruel  and  revengeful, 
as  are  the  gods  of  savages,  slill  visited  with  fear- 
ful punishments  very  trifling  omissions  in  the  rites 
due  to  them  from  men.  Such  a  future  world  and 
such  gods  could  only  have  been  created  or  adopted 
by  a  people  in  whom  faith  was  gready  deficient. 

With  respect  to  fear  and  hate,  though  the  Greeks 
fought  well  upon  occasion,  it  was  almost  invaria- 


142 


MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 


bly  when  they  were  cornered  and  could  not  help 
fighting.  Thermopylse  is  an  exception  to  this  rule, 
and  doubtless  the  Spartans  were  braver  than  the 
Ionic  Greeks,  that  is  to  say,  they  had  more  faith. 
They  also  had  less  love,  as  shown  by  their  greater 
selfishness  in  political  matters,  and  by  their  want 
of  advance  in  and  appreciation  of  the  arts.  So, 
likewise,  hate,  showing  itself  specially  in  the  form 
of  cruelty,  was  a  more  prominent  moral  function 
with  them  than  with  the  Ionic  Greeks.  Their 
practice  of  exposing  such  of  their  children  as  they 
did  not  think  it  desirable  to  bring  up,  and  the 
atrocious  and  cold-blooded  massacre  of  the  Helots 
by  order  of  the  Ephors,  in  the  eighth  year  of  the 
Peloponnesian  war,  are  sufficient  examples  of  their 
notable  want  of  sympathy.  At  Salamis  the  voice 
of  a  vast  majority  of  the  leaders  was  for  retreat, 
and  the  Greek  fleet  would  have  retreated  if  The- 
mistokles  had  not  made  retreat  impossible.  The 
victory  of  Plata^a  was  due  for  more  to  the  want  of 
courage  of  the  army  of  Mardoniu;;  than  to  the 
possession  of  this  quality  by  the  army  of  Pausanias, 
though  doubtless  parts  of  this  last  army  did  some 
good  fighting.  But  what  should  we  say  now  of 
an  army  corps,  supposed  to  be  exceptionally  brave, 
which  should  twice,  in  face  of  the  enemy,  ar- 
range with  the  rest  of  the  army  a  change  of  posi- 
tion to  avoid  meeting  the  best  troops  on  the  side 
of  the  enemy?     Yet  Pausanias  and  his  Spartans 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?     143 

did  this  at  Plataea  to  avoid  the  Persians,  and, 
strange  to  say,  no  one  seemed  to  think  it  a  singu- 
lar or  a  cowardly  act  on  their  part. 

The  family  affections  of  the  Greeks  of  the  time  of 
Pericles  were  certainly  not  more  developed  than 
they  are  with  us  to-day.  They  were  probably  a 
good  deal  less  developed  ;  the  exact  difference 
can  hardly,  I  think,  be  estimated.  Their  sympa- 
thies, outside  their  families  and  immediate  friends, 
were  certainly  far  less  intense  and  less  wide-spread- 
ing than  our  own.  An  average  Greek  could  hardly 
be  said  to  have  any  sympathy  for  people  outside 
his  own  small  state.  Outside  the  Hellenic  race  he 
had  less  than  none  ;  that  is,  he  was  hostile  or  an- 
tagonistic to  all  people  outside  this  limit.  Such  a 
sentiment  as  the  love  of  humanity  he  would  have 
been  incapable  of  understanding ;  and  such  feeling 
as  we  have  for  distant  suffering,  as  shown  in  the 
case  of  the  Chicago  fire,  or  the  late  Southern  pes- 
tilence, would  be  altogether  beyond  his  widest 
reach  of  sympathy. 

There  is  no  evidence  that  the  Greeks  had  any 
feeling  toward  the  lower  animals  such  as  is  com- 
mon among  ourselves.  But  where  they  fell  farther 
behind  us  than  in  any  other  particular,  perhaps, 
was  in  the  want  of  the  love  of  nature,  a  feeling 
that  seems  to  have  been  almost  entirely  absent 
in  them,  and  which  is  so  prominent  in  our  own 
mental  organization.  From  all  these  considerations, 


144 


MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 


as  well  as  from  innumerable  others  which  might 
easily  be  urged  were  it  necessary,  it  seems  to  me 
certain  that  with  the  Greeks  of  the  fifth  century 
before  Christ  love  was,  on  the  whole,  somewhat 
less  developed  than  it  is  with  us,  and  that  faith 
was  a  good  deal  less  developed,  and  that  hate  was 
slightly  and  fear  markedly  more  prominent  func- 
tions in  their  minds  than  they  are  in  ours. 

III.  The  Jews. — In  the  case  of  the  ancient 
Jews,  the  first  thing  to  be  remarked  is  that  their 
moral  nature  differed  from  that  of  the  Greeks  by 
a  markedly  greater  development  of  faith  and  a  less 
development  of  love,  and  that  therefore  hate  was 
more  and  fear  less  pronounced  with  them  than  with 
the  ancient  Greeks.  In  fact,  the  great  want  in  the 
peoples  of  the  Aryan  race  as  compared  with  the 
peoples  belonging  to  the  Semitic  race,  and  there- 
fore in  the  religions  which  the  Aryan  peoples  have 
created,  whether  Brahmanism,  Buddhism,  Zoroas- 
trianism,  Magism,  Druidism,  or  the  religions  of 
the  ancient  Greeks  or  Romans,  has  always  been 
want  of  faith.  The  whole  race  has  always  been 
deficient  in  this  supreme  quality.  Up  to  the  era 
of  the  foundation  of  Christianity,  the  Semites  were 
the  only  people  who  had  created  a  religion  in  which 
the  good  principle  in  the  government  of  the  uni- 
verse was  clearly  dominant  over  the  evil  principle. 
Amongst  the  Semites  the  Jews  were  not  alone  in 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?     145 

having  passed  the  median  line  so  often  here  indi- 
cated. The  writer  of  the  Book  of  Job  was  not  a 
Jew,  and  in  that  great  work  the  supremacy  of 
Jehovah  is  fully  recognized ;  and  not  only  so,  but  it 
is  fully  recognized  that  Jehovah's  attributes  were 
far  more  good  than  evil,  though  it  might  be  diffi- 
cult for  men  to  see  that  they  were  so.  And  here 
it  may  be  well  to  remark  that  at  the  time  of  the 
earliest  Jewish  writings  which  have  come  down  to 
us,  although  Jehovah  is  fully  recognized  as  the  pre- 
ponderant power  in  the  government  of  the  uni- 
verse, yet  it  is  doubtful  whether  his  attributes  at 
this  early  time  were  not  fully  as  much  evil  as  good, 
so  that  at  that  time  it  cannot  be  said  that  with 
these  people  the  median  line,  as  we  may  call  it, 
was  passed.  We  have  now  seen  three  modes  by 
which  this  median  line  may  be  represented  by  the 
intellect:  (i)  In  the  case  of  Buddhism,  by  atheism 
and  annihilation  ;  (2)  In  the  case  of  Zoroastrianism, 
by  good  and  evil  powers  of  equal  strength  ;  (3)  In 
the  case  of  early  Judaism,  by  a  god  in  whose  attri- 
butes good  and  evil  are  equally  balanced,  toward 
whom  fear  and  faitli  go  out  in  equal  degrees.  In 
relation  to  the  moral  nature,  these  three  concep- 
tions are  equal  to  one  another,  in  other  words  these 
three  conceptions  are  inspired  by  moral  natures 
which  have  reached  the  same  level.  At  the  time 
of  the  writing  of  the  Psalms,  however,  say  by  the 
end  of  the  eleventh  century  b.  c,  this  line  was 
7 


146  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

clearly  passed,  and  the  Jews  had  attained  to  a 
moral  elevation,  viewed  from  which  the  govern- 
ment of  the  universe  was  seen  to  be,  on  the  whole, 
more  favorable  than  the  reverse  to  the  children  of 
men.  From  this  time  to  the  era  of  the  foundation 
of  Christianity  a  more  or  less  steady  elevation  of 
the  moral  nature  of  the  Jews  took  place,  an  eleva- 
tion evidenced  by  the  sublime  compositions  of  the 
prophets,  until  the  last  great  step  made  by  this 
people  was  taken  by  Jesus,  and  men  were  made  to 
feel,  and  through  their  feelings  to  see,  that  the  old, 
awful  Jehovah,  that  jealous  God,  who  visited  the 
sins  of  the  fathers  upu.i  the  children  unto  the 
third  and  fourth  generation,  was  in  reality  "  our 
Father  who  art  in  heaven."  The  man,  through 
the  extraordinary  elevation  of  whose  moral  nature 
this  advance  was  made,  may  well  be  called  divine, 
for  he  was  and  is  divine. 

Referring  now  to  page  136,  let  us  consider  as 
well  as  we  can  the  moral  nature  of  the  ancient 
Jews  somewhat  more  in  detail,  so  as  to  compare  it 
with  our  own  moral  nature  at  the  present  time, 
(i.)  The  family  affections  of  this  remarkable  peo- 
ple, as  far  back  as  we  can  go,  seem  to  have  been 
well  developed.  (2.)  Their  national  instinct  or 
their  love  for  the  members  of  their  own  race  seems 
also  to  have  been  well  marked  from  a  very  early 
period.  (3.)  Here,  however,  their  sympathies  stop 
short.     Love  of  humanity  was  a  feeling  to  which 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?      147 

they  never  attained.  They  were  always  ready,  in 
every  sense,  to  spoil  the  Egyptians,  and  not  only 
so,  but  to  glory  in  doing  it.  They  always  looked 
upon  the  non-Jews  as  inferior  people,  and  despised 
them ;  and  they  were  doubtless  right  in  thinking 
the  Gentiles  inferior  to  themselves,  but  they  were 
not  right  in  despising  them.  (4.)  They  have 
always  been  a  bitter  people  to  their  enemies  ;  no 
nation  above  the  state  of  savagery  ever  made  war 
in  a  fiercer  or  more  cruel  spirit.  The  massacres 
which  they  committed  when  they  got  the  upper 
hand  were  numerous  and  terrible,  and  worse  than 
that,  they  gloried  in  them.  The  Jews  contrast  very 
unfavorably  with  the  Greeks  in  regard  to  cruelties 
practiced  in  war.  Among  the  worst  acts  of  the 
Greeks  of  this  kind  were  the  massacre  at  Mity- 
lene,  and  the  massacres  at  Korkyra.  All  these  seem 
to  me  to  have  been  prompted  at  least  as  much  by 
fear  as  by  hate,  and  they  do  not  compare  in  sav- 
agery to  any  of  the  numerous  massacres  recorded 
in  the  early  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  evi- 
dently exulted  in  by  those  who  committed  them. 
(5.)  Just  what  was  the  state  of  their  feelings  to 
the  lower  animals  I  do  not  know.  It  is  probable 
that  their  sympathies  in  this  direction  were  very 
limited.  It  is  certain  that  they  had  not  the  same 
love  for  the  non-human  inhabitants  of  the  earth  as 
we  have,  or  something  of  this  feeling  must  have 
appeared  in  their  literature.    Later  in  their  history 


148  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

the  superiority  of  the  moral  nature  of  Jesus  to  his 
Jewish  predecessors  is  shown  almost  as  much  by 
his  exquisite  sense  of  the  beauty  and  divinity  of 
animated  nature  and  man — that  is,  by  love — as  by 
his  splendid  trust  in  the  goodness  of  the  governor 
of  the  universe — that  is,  by  faith.  (6.)  They  appear 
to  have  been  destitute  of  the  feeling  which  we  call 
love  of  nature,  which  in  the  best  of  us  moderns 
reaches  the  degree  of  intense  passion.  (7.)  The 
God  of  the  Jews  from  the  eleventh  to  the  sixth  cen- 
tury B.C.  was  the  highest  god  which  had  so  far 
been  imagined,  but  no  one  will  say  that  this  deity 
was  as  high  a  conception  as  was  the  God  of  Jesus, 
who  has  been  and  is  the  God  of  the  Christians, 
and  therefore,  speaking  generally,  of  the  moderns. 
The  God  of  the  ancient  Jews  was  less  loving,  less 
merciful  than  is  the  God  of  the  moderns — that  is 
to  say,  they  had  less  faith  than  we  have.  I  know 
it  may  be  said,  and  fairly  said,  that  we  owe  our 
faith  largely  to  them,  but  that  does  not  alter  the 
argument.  (8.)  It  does  not  appear  that  the  ancient 
Jews  believed  in  immortality ;  the  author  of  Job 
(see  Renan's  translation,  p.  56,  ct  scq?)  discusses 
the  question  very  fully,  and  decides  against  a 
future  life.  The  author  of  Ecclesiastes  says  that 
which  befalleth  the  sons  of  men  befalleth  beasts  ; 
one  lot  befalleth  both.  As  the  one  dieth,  so  dieth 
the  other.  The  ancient  Jews  did  not  look  with 
complacency  upon  death ;  their  best  men  consid- 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?     i^g 

ered  it  a  thing  to  fear  and  dislike — an  inevitable 
misfortune — a  blot  upon  the  generally  beneficent 
scheme  of  the  universe.  Not  so  our  best  men  ; 
they  make  friends  with  death.  If  they  are  Chris- 
tians they  have  more  or  less  definite  ideas  of  a 
future  state  ;  and  for  the  good  man  (and,  according 
to  some  more  advanced  sects  of  Christians,  for  the 
bad  man  also)  either  at  once,  or  after  a  period  of 
probation,  the  state  of  the  dead  is  supposed  to  be 
more  desirable  than  the  state  of  the  living.  If  they 
are  not  Christians,  they  do  not  pretend  to  know 
what  the  name  death  means,  or  Vv^hat  state  lies 
behind  that  veil — whether  the  existence  beyond 
will  be  conscious  or  unconscious — whether  the  state 
will  be  individual  or  diffused  ;  but  they  believe  that 
death  is  good  just  as  surely  as  life  is  good.  They 
know  no  more  about  it  than  the  ancient  Jews  did, 
but  they  have  more  faith.  It  must  not  be  sup- 
posed that  I  intend  to  say  that  even  the  men  who 
have  the  most  faith  at  the  present  time  desire  their 
own  death  because  they  feel  certain  that  the  state 
after  death  is  more  to  be  desired  than  feared. 
There  are  two  reasons  why  this  state  of  mind  will 
probably  never  be  reached.  The  first  is  that  the 
instinctive  fear  of  death,  which  is  quite  apart  from 
and  independent  of  religious  convictions,  and 
which  is  a  result  of  natural  selection,  will,  no  doubt, 
though  it  is  declining  in  strength  as  the  race  ad- 
vances  toward  mental   maturity,  always   exist  in 


ISO 


MAN'S  MORAL   NATURE. 


sufficient  force  to  prevent  it ;  and,  secondly,  be- 
cause, as  our  faith  toward  the  unknown  advances, 
so  does  our  faith  toward  the  known  also  advance. 
So  that  as  we  have  more  faith  toward  our  state 
after  death,  we  have  more  faith  toward  the  things 
that  surround  us  in  life ;  and  not  only  so,  but  as 
faith  advances  so  does  love  advance,  and  the  man 
who  has  the  most  faith  has  also  the  most  love ;  and 
by  the  time  that  the  manacles  of  fear  which  have 
so  far  chiefly  held  us  to  this  life  are  loosened,  if 
that  time  ever  comes,  love  will  have  woven  cords 
not  less  strong  to  withhold  us  from  the  brink  of 
that  shadowy  river  which  we  sometimes  long  yet 
tremble  to  cross.  My  general  conclusion  is  that 
the  ancient  Jews  were  behind  us  in  faith  and  still 
more  in  love  ;  that  fear  was  a  more  prominent  func- 
tion, and  hate  a  good  deal  more  prominent  func- 
tion, of  their  moral  nature  than  of  ours.  The 
result,  then,  of  this  hasty  and  cursory  inquiry  into 
the  mental  state  of  our  remote  ancestors  leads  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  moral  nature  is  not  a  fixed 
quantity,  but  that  it  is  altering  in  the  direction  of 
more  love  and  faith  and  less  hate  and  fear. 

In  the  second  place,  let  us  compare  the  moral 
nature  of  savages  with  that  of  the  more  civilized 
races  of  men.  Most  people  will  admit,  whether 
they  believe  in  evolution  or  not,  that  the  initial 
state  of  man  was  that  of  a  savage — that  the  mental 
constitution  savages  possess,  we,  or  at  least  our  an- 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?      151 

cestors  once  possessed,  and  nothing  more.  So 
that  if  the  moral  nature  of  a  savacfe  differs  from 
that  of  a  civilized  man,  the  moral  nature  cannot  be 
a  fixed  quantity.  How,  then,  does  the  moral 
nature  of  a  savage  compare  with  the  moral  nature 
of  an  average  man  belonging  to  one  of  the  ad- 
vanced nations  of  Europe  or  America  ?  The  low- 
est savages  are  said  to  possess  little  love  or  faith, 
and  to  have  the  functions  hate  and  fear,  especially 
fear,  largely  developed.  Baker  (^Albert  N'  Yanzd) 
says,  *'  They  are  universally  cowardly,  and  do  not 
know  what  love  is.  They  have  no  idea  of  grati- 
tude, and  think  that  anything  that  is  done  to 
please  them  is  done  because  the  doer  is  afraid  of 
them  and  wishes  to  propitiate  them.  Love,  even 
for  wife,  husband,  or  child,  does  not  seem  to  exist 
among  them.  Faith  they  have  absolutely  none. 
They  have  no  belief  in  a  god  or  future  state — in- 
deed, laugh  at  the  idea  of  this  last."  They  hardly 
get  beyond — perhaps  do  not  get  beyond — sexual 
desire.  Their  love  for  their  offspring  and  for  their 
father  and  mother  is,  perhaps,  the  strongest  feeling 
of  this  sort  that  they  possess,  and  their  affection 
for  their  near  relations  is  not  strong  as  compared 
with  ours ;  for  many  savages  will  sell  their  chil- 
dren for  a  moderate  consideration,  and  many  kill 
and  desert  their  parents  when  they  become  old 
and  helpless.  Every  man  outside  a  ver)  limited 
circle  is  an  enemy  to  the  savage.     He   has,  to 


152 


MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 


say  the  best  of  it,  no  good  feeling  for  any  one 
beyond  this  narrow  Hmit.  His  feeHng  toward 
his  gods,  when  he  has  any,  is  a  mixture  of  hate 
and  fear.  This  is  certain  from  the  account  he 
himself  gives  of  these  imaginary  beings.  Death 
he  regards  with  intense  and  unmixed  terror. 
**  Most  of  the  Finnish  and  Altaic  tribes,"  says  Cas- 
tren,  "  cherish  a  belief  that  death,  which  they  look 
upon  with  terrible  fear,  does  not  entirely  destroy 
individual  existence."  The  aspects  of  nature  have 
no  moral  significance  for  him  except  in  a  bad  sense. 
Storm,  tempest,  night,  earthquakes,  eclipses,  and 
all  the  darker  phenomena  of  earth  and  air  fill  him 
with  vague  fear,  which  is  often  intense.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  brighter  aspects  of  nature,  from 
which  we  derive  such  a  large  proportion  of  our 
happiness,  awaken  in  him  no  enthusiasm.  Sun- 
shine, flowers,  glancing  rivers,  lake  expanses,  and 
all  that  to  us  in  nature  is  so  beautiful,  is  not  beauti- 
ful to  him.  If  the  aspects  of  nature  are  favorable 
to  his  pursuit  of  food,  he  is  satisfied,  no  more.  If 
they  are  adverse  to  him,  he  is  cast  down.  If  they 
are  unusual,  he  is  terrified.  Terror,  indeed,  is 
the  most  prominent  of  the  moral  functions  in  the 
mind  of  the  savage.  Reade  {^Majiyrdom  of  3Ian) 
says  :  "  It  is  impossible  to  describe  or  even  to  im- 
agine the  tremulous  condition  of  the  savage  mind  ; 
yet  the  traveler  can  see  ft^om  their  aspect  and 
manner  that  they  dwell  in  a  state  of  never-ceasing 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?     JC3 


dread."  Sir  J.  Lubbock  [Prehistoric  Times)  says  : 
"It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  horrible 
dread  of  unknown  evil  hangs  like  a  thick  cloud 
over  savage  life,  and  embitters  every  pleasure." 
What  I  say  of  the  moral  nature  of  savages  is 
true  in  broad  outline  of  all  savages,  whatever 
their  color  and  whatever  their  race.  Quotations 
similar  to  the  above  might  easily  be  extended  in- 
definitely ;  but  those  given  are  sufficient  to  estab- 
lish what  few  would  think  of  denying — the  fact  that 
the  moral  nature  of  savages  is  lower  than  the 
moral  nature  of  civilized  man.  We  cannot  deny 
this.  We  must  admit  a  difference,  and  at  the  bot- 
tom the  difference  is  this  :  ::n  the  savage  mind 
there  is  absolutely  and  relatively  less  love  and  less 
faith ;  and  certainly,  relatively,  and  perhaps  abso- 
lutely, more  hate  and  more  fear.  .     , 

Now,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  moral  nature 
of  children  as  compared  with  the  moral  nature  of 
grown-up  people  of  the  same  race  ?  In  the  first 
place,  their  capacity  for  affection  is  certainly  very 
limited.  This  is  perhaps  best  shown  by  the  ab- 
sence of  grief  for  the  loss  of  those  by  death  whom 
they  would  love  if  they  loved  anybody.  Children 
up  to  eight  years  old  rarely  grieve  to  any  marked 
degree  upon  the  death  of  father,  mother,  sister,  or 
brother.  Many  young  children  have  a  way  of 
seeming  very  affectionate,  and  our  affection  for 
7* 


154  MAN'S   AI    '  AL    NATURE. 

them  misleads  us,  and  makes  us  think  that  they 
love  us  as  we  love  them.  Not  only  is  it  capable 
of  proof  that  young  children  are  not  susceptible  of 
love  to  any  great  degree,  but  it  is  certain  that  boys 
and  girls  almost  grown  up  are  greatly  deficient  as 
compared  with  mature  men  and  women  in  this 
faculty.  A  remarkably  shrewd  old  lady  once  said 
to  the  author  that  from  her  observation  upon  her- 
self and  others — and  her  opportunities  for  obser- 
vation had  been  ample — she  was  satisfied  that 
young  girls  were  almost  absolutely  heartless.  The 
Germans  have  an  emphatic  mode  of  expressing 
the  same  thing.  Witli  them  all  the  names  for 
girl,  as — mddcJicn,  mddlcin,  frdtdcin^  except  niagd 
and  dime,  which  two  have  not  exactly  the  meaning 
of  our  word  girl,  are  neuter;  but  no  one  pretends 
that  the  faculty  of  loving,  any  more  than  any  other 
faculty  or  organ,  comes  into  existence  all  at  once  ; 
so  that  if  it  be  granted,  as  it  must  be,  that  this  fa- 
culty is  absent  in  quite  young  children,  and  as  it  is 
only  developed  gradually,  it  must  be  immature  still 
in  boys  and  girls.  Faith  is  equally  abs\:nt  in  young 
children,  and  equally  deficient  in  youth.  Comte 
remarks  that  the  religion  of  the  young  children  of 
the  higher  races  is  fetichism,  of  older  children 
polytheism,  and  only  becomes  monotheistic  toward 
puberty.  I  do  not  feel  sure  of  the  truth  of  this 
statement  taken  literally,  but  the  spirit  of  the  ob- 
servation is  certainly  just.     No   young   child — I 


IS  THE  MORAL  NATURE  A  FIXED  QUANTITY?     155 


_A- 


bclicvc  I  might  say  no  boy  or  girl — trusts  God  as 
older  people  often  come  to  do.  Children  are  de- 
ficient in  confidence  and  courage,  other  aspects  of 
faith.  They  are  distrustful,  suspicious,  cowardly,  as 
compared  with  grown-up  people,  and  they  especially 
dread  and  distrust  the  unknown.  Conversely,  an- 
ger, or  dislike,  and  fear  are  early  developed  out  of 
all  proportion  to  their  opposites.  I  fancy  that  most 
people  who  are  not  too  old  to  look  back  into  their 
childhood  can  remember  that  they  felt  both  fear 
and  hate  long  before  they  felt  either  grief  or  love. 
Observation  of  our  own  and  other  people's  chil- 
dren will  teach  us  the  same  fact.  Perhaps  no  one 
has  a  better  chance  of  making  these  observations 
than  a  practitior  r  of  medicine.  He  has  first-rate 
opportunities  ot  observing  the  capacity  of  young 
children  to  feel  terror,  and  he  has  better  opportu- 
nities than  most  people  to  observe  their  anger. 
Love  and  faith,  then,  are  developed  comparatively 
late  in  life;  hate  and  fear  comparatively  early. 
Children  who  are  born  to  die  young,  tubercular 
children  especially,  often  spring  up  mcMitally  to  an 
immature  imitation  of  maturity,  like  plants  chance- 
sown  late  in  the  year,  which  put  out  fiowers  before 
they  are  half  grown,  and  press  forward  in  a  des- 
perate attempt  to  mature  their  fruit,  when  they 
have  not  time  to  attain  to  half  the  normal  size  of 
their  species.  Such  children  are  caught  at  by  tract 
writers  and  sensational  novelists,  and  held  up  as 


156  MAIL'S  MORAL   NATURE. 

>—  .III  !■■!    ■■ I...II. ,1       .,       ...         — ■■■■■^  ■         I     ■— — ,  .  I        ,.       11^  III    I  I  .    ■■■       .11 

examples  l)y  pious  jm;()j)1(;  for  licaltliy  l){)ys  .'iiid 
■girls.  As  well  sjujw  the  six-weeks-old  j>iiinpkiii 
on  the  first  of  July,  covering-  yards  of  ground  with 
its  iminense  leaves  and  vinous,  and  just  thinking 
about  (lowering,  the  month-old  j)umj>kin  of  the  first 
of  October,  widi  its  miserable  fruit  alr<;ady  formed, 
and  say  :  See!  take  j)attern  by  this  pumpkin,  you 
idl(i  ]>lant,  who  think  of  nothing  but  rank  growth, 
and  have  no  care  for  the  duties  of  life.  Do  you  not 
see  that  this  [)lant,  younger  than  you,  is  already 
bringing  forth  fruit  ?  lUit  the  idle  and  rank  pumpkin 
is  a  valuable  plant,  and  its  more  forward  neighbor 
is  good  for  nothing. 

I  have  now  (examined  the  f|Uf!Stion,  Is  the  moral 
nature  a  fixed  (piantity?  in  the  three  mod(;s  b} 
which  alone,  as  far  as  I  know,  it  can  be  examined, 
and  the  examination  ])y  (lach  mod(!  has  led  to 
the  same  conclusion.  That  conclusion  is  that  the 
moral  nature  is  not  a  fix(;d  ([uantity,  but  that  its 
two  antagonistic  halv(!S,  love  and  faith,  and  hate 
and  fear,  are  not  developed  synchronously,  but  that 
fear  and  hate  are  developed  earliest,  faith  and  love; 
later  ;  that  th(;s(;  two  last  have;,  and  have  nec(!S- 
sarily,  as  they  grew,  encroached  u[)on  the  two  first, 
until  the  moral  nature  of  man  has  become  such  as 
we  know  it  to  be  to-day — not  very  high,  certainly, 
but  still  high  as  companul  with  its  initial  state.  The 
next  thing  for  us  to  considctr  is  the  means  by  which 
this  advance  has  been  effected. 


CMAITKR  V 


TMIC  IIISTOkV  OK    THK  DDVI.f/jPMKNT  OF  TIIK  MORAL 

NATUKK. 


"The  Lord  advances,  and  yet  advanccH; 
Always  llic  Hliadow  in  front  ;  always  llic  reached  hand,  bringing  up  the 
Iafj(rardH." — Wai.t  Whitman. 

"  rVntclre  panni  Ions  Ics  chcmins  rpii  siiivent  les  liommes,  y  on  a  til 
iin  |)Iii'.  (Maud  ii(»inl)r(:  f|ii'on  ii'a  coutiinu;  dc  Ic  croire  qui  dcliouchcnt 
dans  Ic  ciol." — MAUkicic  ok  CiuiiKiN. 


The  probl(^m  Lctforc  us  now  is,  given  an  average 
moral  nature,  in  whicli  liaU;  and  fear  jjreatly  pre- 
ponderate; over  love;  and  faitli,  to  find  by  what 
means  hale  and  f(;ar  were  caus(;d  gradually  to 
lessen,  and  love;  and  faith  gradually  to  incrc^ase, 
until  tlu;  level  of  the  i>resent  average;  moral  nature; 
was  re;ached. 

These  means  have  l)(;en—  (I.)  Natural  Se;lec- 
tie)n  ;  (II.)  Sexual  Se;le;ctie)n  ;  (III.)  Sejcial  IJfe  ; 
(IV.)  Art;  (V.)  Re;ligion. 

I.  Natural  Selection. — We  have  se;(;n  (pp.  75, 
r/ .rr^.)  that  elevatie)!!  e)f  the  moral  naliu-e:  is  inti- 
mately associated,  threjugh  the  relatie)n  of  the  moral 
nature  to  the  great  sympathetic  nervous  systeim, 
with  f)hysical  anel  me;ntal  vigor,  with  health  and 
length  of  life,  anel  we;  know  that  ele:vatie)n  of  the; 
moral  nature;  is  as  sure;ly  inhe:rite;d  as  any  other 
me;ntal  or  be)elily  posse'ssie^n.  This  being  so,  it  is 
easy  to  see:  that  the)se  natie)ns,  tribe;s,  faiuilic:s,  e)r  in- 
divie.luals  in  whe)m  this  me)ral  elevatie)n  exists  must 

have  an  advantage  over  those  in  whom  it  does  not 

15'J 


l6o  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

exist  in  the  same  degree.  Moreover,  as  intellectual 
superiority  on  the  whole  (p.  80)  goes  along  with 
moral  elevation,  this  gives  those  endowed  with  the 
last  another  very  great  advantage  over  those  who 
are  endowed  with  it  in  less  proportion.  The  men, 
then,  who  have  this  master  quality,  moral  elevation, 
in  the  fullest  development,  will  certainly  h?"e  on  an 
average  more  children  (p.  84,  et  scq.),  and  will  have 
more  health,  strength,  wisdom,  and  courage,  and 
a  longer  life  with  which  to  rear,  protect,  and  pro- 
vide for  thes2  children  ;  which  children,  themselves 
inheriting  this  superior  moral  nature,  will  prosper 
more  than  the  averaire  of  men  and  women  of  their 
age  and  country,  and  transmit,  in  their  turn,  the 
advantage  which  they  inherited  to  their  posterity. 
Such  superior  individuals  and  races  must  neces- 
sarily encroach  upon  the  inferior  individuals  and 
races  with  whom  they  come  into  competition  in 
the  struggle  for  existence,  and  eventually  supplant 
these  last — a  process  which  is  said  to  be  taking 
place  at  the  present  time  in  Europe  in  the  case  of 
the  Jews,  who,  it  is  said,  are  increasing  in  numbers 
much  more  rapidly  than  the  populations  among 
which  they  live,  and  who  are  certainly  attracting 
to  themselves  far  more  than  their  share,  according 
to  number,  of  the  wealth  of  these  countries,  and 
therefore  more  of  the  comforts  and  conveniences 
of  life.  As  to  the  superiority  of  the  moral  nature  of 
the  Jews  as  a  race,  I  thin!  there  can  be  no  question 


HISrORY  OF  ITS  DEVELOPMENT.  igi 

aljout  it  (p.  76,  et  seq.,  and  p.  144,  tt  scq.).  By  the 
process  above  indicated,  a  steady  upward  tendency  is 
secured,  as  long  as  the  primal  energy  which  origin- 
ated the  human  race  shall  continue  unexhausted 
within  it.  It  may  be  said  further,  that  elevation  of 
the  moral  nature  protects  those  who  possess  it, 
other  things  being  equal,  from  sensual  habits  and 
vices ;  and  thus  besides  being,  as  it  is  in  the  first 
place,  an  accompaniment  of  health  and  strength, 
becomes  also  a  cause  of  these. 

II.  Sexual  Selection. — The  greater  the  power 
of  loving  in  men  and  women,  the  greater,  other 
things  being  equal,  will  be  the  inclination  to 
marry;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  nothing  attracts 
men  and  women  so  much  as  love  in  the  opposite 
sex.  On  the  whole,  therefore,  individuals  with 
the  faculty  of  loving  strongly  developed  will  be 
more  sure  to  marry  and  have  descendants  than 
other  individuals  with  the  faculty  of  loving  less 
developed.  IJy  means  of  natural  selection  and 
sexual  selection,  therefore,  the  families  and  races 
with  a  higher  moral  nature  tend  to  encroach  upon 
and  extinguish  families  and  races  with  a  lower 
moral  nature,  and  so  to  retain  and  diffuse  the  high- 
est moral  elevation  which  has  been  reached  at 
any  given  time.  From  this  highest  moral  plateau 
spring  up  from  time  to  time — in  accordance  with 
the  law  that  the  offspring,  while  resembling  the 


i62  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

parents,  differ  from  them  also — still  higher  moral 
natures.  These  in  their  turn  tend  to  be  preserved 
and  diffused  as  before.  These  two  means  to  the 
great  end  are  real  and  operative,  but  the  process 
of  moral  perfectionment,  slow  as  it  is,  would  be 
infinitely  slower-  if  these  means  alone  had  to  be 
depended  upon. 

III.  Social  Life. — Each  child  begins  life  with- 
out a  moral  nature,  but  with  a  certain  inherited 
faculty  of  developing  a  more  or  less  elevated 
moral  nature  in  accordance  with  the  child's  ante- 
cedents and  in  accordance  with  the  medium  in 
which  the  mind  of  the  child  expands.  After  a 
few  years  the  child  has  a  moral  nature,  but  of  a 
much  lower  order,  in  civilized  countries  at  least, 
than  that  possessed  by  the  adults  among  whom 
it  lives.  The  child,  if  brought  up  among  savages, 
or  cut  off  altogether  from  human  society  like 
the  children  in  the  experiment  of  Psammetichus, 
would  acquire  a  moral  nature  which,  however, 
would  be  undoubtedly  of  a  very  low  order.  This 
aborted  moral  nature  the  child  would  derive  di- 
rectly by  heredity  from  its  parents.  In  social 
life  the  next  step  beyond  this  initial  hereditary 
condition  of  the  moral  nature  is  made  through 
contact  with  father,  mother,  brothers,  sisters,  and 
other  members  of  the  household.  The  child 
absorbs  love  chiefly  from  its  mother,  and  faith 


HISTORY  OF  ITS  DEVEIOPMENT.  163 

chiefly  from  its  father.  How  ?  By  contact  with 
their  moral  natures.  Yes,  but  how  by  contact  ? 
Pygmalion,  by  intense  love,  infused  love — that 
is,  life — into  his  statue.  The  love  of  the  mother 
permeates  the  child.  The  faith  of  the  father 
permeates  the  child.  How  does  this  happen  ?  I 
do  not  think  we  can  tell,  but  it  does  happen. 
We  see  the  same  thing  taking  place  on  a  larger 
scale  in  the  spread  of  emotion  through  a  body  of 
men,  as  in  the  case  of  a  panic  in  an  army  or  city ; 
or  as  in  the  case  of  the  divine  pheme  which  flew 
into  and  spread  through  the  Grecian  camp  on  the 
fourth  of  the  month  Boedromion,  immediately 
before  the  battle  of  Mykale,  which  occurrence, 
along  with  many  other  things,  proved  to  Hero- 
dotus that  the  gods  take  part  in  the  affairs  of 
man  ;  or,  as  in  the  case  of  religious  enthusiasm, 
that  is  love  and  faith,  at  a  camp  meeting  or  re- 
vival. For  what  is  called  "getting  religion"  is  not 
a  fancy.  It  is  as  genuine  an  experience  as  "fall- 
ing in  love,"  and  is  a  somewhat  parallel  phe- 
nomenon to  this  last.  It  consists  in  an  eleva- 
tion of  the  whole  moral  nature,  both  love  and 
faith,  rapidly  affected,  usually,  perhaps  always, 
by  contact  with  another  moral  nature  previously  in 
this  elevated  state.  It  is  a  genuine  exaltation  of 
the  subject  of  it  at  the  time — the  discredit  thrown 
upon  it  being  due  to  the  fact  that  this  exalted 
state  is  apt  to  be  temporary,  and  the  future  life  of 


164  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

the  person  fail  to  justify  the  expectations  which 
he  or  she  excite  during  the  period  of  moral  eleva- 
tion. These  waves  of  feeling  are  not  dependent 
upon  ideas,  and  this  ebb  and  (low  of  feeling,  with- 
out the  intervention  of  ideas,  is  not  confined  to 
instances  on  the  great  scale  such  as  those  given, 
but  is  taking  place  every  day  and  all  day  long 
whenever  there  are  several  people  together,  and 
may  be  verified  by  any  one  who  has  a  tolerably 
sensitive  moral  nature  a  dozen  times  a  day  if  he 
or  she  will  only  pay  attention  to  it.  The  follow- 
ing is  an  extreme  instance  of  what  I  am  now 
speaking  about.  I  once  attended  a  lady  who  died 
undc;r  peculiarly  painful  circumstances.  A  few 
minutes  after  her  death  I  met  her  husband  in 
another  room.  He  had  been  summoned  on  ac- 
count of  her  critical   condition.     He  said  "  How 

is ?"     I   said,    "It  is   all    over."     He  said, 

"Dead?"  These  were  the  only  words  spoken 
by  either  of  us.  His  face  showed  very  little  sign 
of  emotion.  The  moment  he  spoke,  or  even,  I 
think,  before  he  spoke  the  one  word  "Dead?" 
.  I  felt  an  intense  vibration  or  thrill  of  grief  sweep 
through  my  body.  Instantly  the  tears  literally 
poured  from  my  eyes.  All  this  during  the  mo- 
ment while  I  still  stood  looking  at  him.  Almost 
at  the  same  instant  tears  ran  from  his  eyes  in 
a  stream,  and  directly  afterward  blood  poured 
rapidly  from  both  his  nostrils.     This  man,  who 


in  STORY  OF  ITS  DEVELOPMENT.  165 

was  about  twenty-five  years  old,  and  in  excellent 
health,  died  in  about  three  months  after  this  of 
a  broken  heart.  Now  in  this  case  there  can  be  no 
question  as  to  the  intensity  of  feeling  on  the  part 
of  the  person  in  whom  it  was  initiated.  There  is 
equally  little  doubt  in  my  mind  as  to  the  direct 
overflow  in  this  case  of  feelincr  from  the  one 
moral  nature  to  the  other,  inde[)endently  of  the 
intellect.  Vox  I  had  no  means  of  knowing  the 
intensity  of  his  feeling,  and  still  I  felt  it.  I 
have  seen  a  good  many  men  lose  their  wives, 
and  a  good  many  women  lose  their  husbands, 
both  before  and  since  that  time.  I  have  seen 
emotion  expressed  in  every  way,  I  think,  that 
it  can  be  expressed.  I  have  never  been  affected 
by  it  myself  in  the  same  manner  nor  to  the  same 
degree.  And  subsequent  events  showed  to  my 
satisfaction  that  I  have  never,  before  or  since, 
stood  in  the  presence  of  such  intense  grief  as  on 
that  occasion. 

The  child  feels  the  love  of  its  mother  who  is 
lending  over  it  while  it  is  asleep,  though  it  is  not 
conscious  of  it,  just  as  the  seed  feels  the  sun's 
rays,  though  it  is  an  inch  under  the  ground,  and 
is  unconscious  of  the  existence  of  a  sun  or  of 
anything  else.  The  boy  feels  the  courage — that 
is,  faith — of  his  father,  as  he  walks  with  him 
through  dark  woods  or  wild  strange  places.  Any 
one  who  has  been  at  sea  in  a  dangerous  storm. 


l66  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

and  who  has  at  all  observed  his  own  feelings, 
knows  how  differently  he  felt  when  in  company 
with  one  or  two  of  the  ship's  officers  who  had  no 
fear,  and  when  he  was  with  some  of  the  passen- 
gers who  were  greatly  alarmed. 

In  this  way,  by  contact  more  or  less  close  in  so- 
cial life,  the  mass  of  the  work  is  done  ; — by  sHort 
steps — in  the  common  associations  of  every  day, 
in  every  household — always — among  children, 
young  men,  young  women — among  the  average 
people.  The  superior  moral  nature  of  the  house- 
hold, the  village,  the  city,  the  state,  the  country, 
takes  the  lead  and  the  rest  follow — closer  or  far- 
ther off  th<^y  follow — whether  with  willing  or  re- 
luctant si^ps  they  follow — slower  or  faster  they 
follow;  and  in  front  of  the  leaders  is  a  solid  wall 
of  blackness,  into  which  they  are  marching, 
though  into  which  they  cannot  see.  I  say  the 
foremost  leads  and  the  rest  follow.  Who  is  the 
foremost  ?  He  or  she  with  the  most  love  or 
faith,  or  both  ;  and  consequently  with  the  least 
hate  or  fear,  or  both.  In  the  typical  household, 
and  in  all  good  households,  there  is  an  approxi- 
mation to  the  ideal  society.  The  mother  leads 
in  love,  the  father  in  faith  ;  and  from  them,  by 
contact  with  them,  the  children  catch  this  love 
and  faith,  and  it  is  gradually  transferred  to  them 
without  being  lost  to  the  parents.  "  For  if  you 
diviae  pleasure  and  love,  each  part  exceeds  the 


HISTORY  OF  ITS  DEVELOPMENT.  167 

whole,  and  we  know  not  how  much,  while  any 
yet  remains  unshared,  of  pleasure  may  be  gained. 
This  truth  is  that  deep  well  whence  sages  draw 
the  unenvied  light  of  hope." 

Does  not  the  love  of  a  mother  make  the  child 
love  ?  If  not,  what  is  it  good  for  ?  And  what 
does  make  the  child  love  ?  Does  not  the  cour- 
age, the  faith  of  the  father  to  face  whatever 
exists  or  may  happen  in  this  world  or  the  next, 
give  courage  or  faith  to  the  children  who  are 
with  him  every  day,  and  whose  greatest  ambition 
is  to  emulate  their  father,  who  to  them  is  the 
greatest  of  heroes,  as  their  mother  is  the  chief  of 
saints  ?  If  it  does  not,  whence  do  they  get  their 
courage,  their  faith  ?  Does  not  the  love  and 
faith — the  absence  of  hate  and  fear — in  the  good 
priest,  warm  and  strengthen  the  heart  and  elevate 
the  life  of  his  congregation  ?  If  not,  what  is  the 
good  of  him  ?  We  know  that  mothers  and  fa- 
thers and  priests  often  fail,  from  want  of  the  quali- 
ties in  question  in  themselves,  to  fill,  from  a 
moral  point  of  view,  the  place  they  occupy  in 
the  social  scheme — fail  to  vivify  the  souls  en- 
trusted to  their  care — to  feed  the  souls  which 
depend  on  them  for  spiritual  food,  and  which,  un- 
supplied  by  them,  are  starved  and  undeveloped. 
We  know  that  women  are  mothers  who  never 
should  have  been  mothers,  as  far  as  we  can  see  ; 
that  men  are  fathers  who  never  should  have  been 


l68  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

fathers ;  and  that — more  inexcusable  still,  and 
more  common — men  are  priests  who  never  should 
have  been  priests.  What  then  ?  The  child  gets 
another  spiritual  father,  mother,  leader,  such  as 
he  can  get,  good  or  bad,  and  fares,  spiritually, 
well  or  ill,  as  he  can.  To  the  higher  grades  of 
moral  natures  those  in  the  lower  ranks  all  occupy 
the  position  of  children.  The  lower  as  well  as 
the  higher  are  all  capable  of  more  or  less  exalta- 
tion if  subjected  to  the  proper  influence,  both 
child,  and  man,  and  woman. 

It  would  not  be  right  to  leave  out  of  sight  en- 
tirely that  agent  in  moral  advance  which  has  so 
far  been  generally  considered  the  sole  agent.  I 
refer  to  excitation  of  the  moral  nature  through 
and  by  the  intellect.  "  I  have  purposely  kept  this 
mode  of  acting  upon  the  moral  nature  in  the 
background  because  I  believe — in  fact,  I  know — 
it  deserves  very  little  of  the  weight  which  has 
usually  been  attached  to  it.  It  is  true  that  the 
intellect  may  serve  as  a  channel  for  the  convey- 
ance of  emotion ;  but  alterations  in  the  moral 
nature  can  never  have  their  source  in  the  intellect 
either  of  the  person  experl'^ncing  the  emotion  or 
of  any  one  else.  The  p  ^on  who  seeks  to  act 
upon  the  moral  nature  of  another  must  himself 
feel  the  emotion  he  wishes  to  excite  ;  then  his 
own  mtellect  and  the  intellect  of  the  person  to  be 
acted  upon  may  be  used  as  a  channel  to  convey 


HISTORY  OF  ITS  DEVELOPMENT.  169 

from  the  one  moral  nature  to  the  other  the  moral 
state  in  question  ;  but  this  is  the  only  way,  or 
almost  the  only  way,  in  which  the  intellect  comes 
into  action  in  the  evolution  of  moral  states.  The 
notion  that  grown-up  people  or  children  are  made 
better  by  rules  and  catechisms  cannot  be  too  soon 
done  away  with. 

IV.  Art, — Here  and  there,  on  the  face  of  the 
earth,  in  the  course  of  the  ages,  are  born  men 
whose  moral  natures  are  superior  to  those  of 
their  contemporaries,  as  there  are  others  born 
whose  intellects  are  more  keen  and  piercing. 
These  men  we  call  poets,  artists,  orators  ;  they 
are  the  high  priests  of  humanity.  The  essential 
feature  which  distinguishes  these  men  from  the 
men  about  them  is  that  they  love  more  and  have 
more  faith  than  these.  They  love  more  intensely. 
They  love  more  objects.  Their  love  reaches  a 
higher  level  and  covers  more  surface  than  in  the 
case  of  the  average  man.  And  they  have  more 
faith — more  trust  in  God  and  nature — more  con- 
fidence in  the  essential  goodness  of  men,  women, 
and  themselves.  They  necessarily,  therefore, 
hate  less  and  fear  less.  If  the  elevated  moral 
nature  of  these  men  died  with  them,  their  exist- 
ence would  be  comparatively  valueless  to  man- 
kind.    By  natural  selection  and  sexual  selection 

they  would  undoubtedly  exert  a  certain  influence 
8 


lyo  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

upon  the  race  which  in  tens  of  thousands  of  years 
would  become  appreciable.  The  moral  nature  of 
all  men,  however,  possesses  this  quality — that  it 
can  be  acted  upon,  moved,  elevated ;  and  there 
is  a  mysterious  relation,  a  sympathy,  existing 
among  men  by  which  we  are  all  compelled,  in 
spite  of  ourselves,  to  seek  to  impress  our  influ- 
ence, whether  for  good  or  evil,  upon  one  another. 
Under  the  operation  of  this  law,  the  men  of  su- 
perior moral  natures  have  sought  for  and  found 
various  means  by  which  they  might  convey  to 
others  their  moral  attitude  toward  themselves 
and  their  surroundings.  These  means  we  call  by 
the  generic  name  of  art.  The  principal  divisions 
of  art  are  poetry,  oratory,  music,  painting,  sculp- 
ture, architecture.  By  all  these  means  men  ex- 
press moral  states  with  more  or  less  clearness  and 
fullness.  In  some  instances  they  express  ideas 
as  well  as  moral  states ;  but  just  to  the  extent 
that,  or  in  the  degree  that,  the  production  is  a 
work  of  art,  the  moral  state  is  the  central  matter 
to  be  expressed,  and  the  ideas  are  simply  used 
to  assist  in  this  object.  In  poetry,  oratory, 
painting,  and  sculpture,  ideas  are  used  in  this 
way  or  expressed  incidentally.  In  music,  no  ideas 
are  expressed  along  with  the  moral  state,  and  if 
any  ideas  are  excited  by  a  symphony  or  sonata, 
they  are  excited  by  the  moral  state  and  are 
secondary  to  it. 


HISTORY  OF  ITS  DEVELOPMENT 


171 


Now,  suppose  a  man  is  born  into  the  world 
with  a  moral  nature  greatly  superior  to  the  ave- 
rage moral  natures  of  the  men  about  him ;  it  does 
not  necessarily  follow  that  his  intellect  should  be 
very  much  above,  or  even  that  it  should  be  at  all 
above,  the  average,  but  it  is  very  likely  that  it 
will  be,  for  the  reasons  given  at  p.  80,  and  a  cer- 
tain intellectual  superiority  must  accompany  the 
moral  elevation  to  enable  the  man  to  find  expres- 
sion for  this  last. 

An  elevated  moral  nature  Is  one  In  which  love 
or  faith  or  both  are  in  excess,  and  hate  or  fear, 
or  both,  are  consequently  in  diminished  amount. 
How  will  such  a  moral  nature  act  in  art,  or  by 
means  of  art,  on  the  men  who  surround  and  suc- 
ceed it  so  as  to  raise  their  moral  natures  ?  And 
here  we  must  notice  that  all  that  is  really  required 
is  contact.  Let  a  lower  moral  nature  come  into 
contact  with  a  higher  moral  nature,  and  the  first 
will  be  improved,  that  is  elevated,  by  the  last. 
What  the  artist  has  to  do,  therefore,  is  to  project 
his  moral  nature,  by  means  of  sounds,  colors, 
forms,  or  ideas,  so  that  other  moral  natures  may 
con.e  in  contact  with  it.  either  through  the  senses 
or  through  the  intellect. 

Let  us  suppose  that  the  artist  to  be  considered 
is  a  poet.  His  moral  elevation  will  probably  con- 
sist chiefly  in  excess  of  love  with  a  proportionate 
extinction  of  its  opposite,  hate.     But,  as  we  have 


1^2  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

seen,  the  other  positive  function  of  the  moral 
nature,  faith,  will  be  in  him  almost  certainly  above 
the  average,  and  may  even  be  in  excess  of  love. 
A  poet  must  have  a  certain  elevation  of  faith  as 
well  as  Of  love,  or  he  becomes  contemptible  from 
what  we  call  weakness. 

Men  in  whose  moral  natures  faith  is  greatly  in 
excess  of  love,  both  functions  being  very  promi- 
nent, or  men  in  whom  both  love  and  faith  are 
extraordinarily  developed,  scarcely  use  poetry  as 
a  mode  of  expression  ;  it  is  inadequate  to  their 
purpose.  These  men  will  be  considered  farther 
on. 

There  are  many  poets  who,  with  a  certain 
moral  elevation,  depend  more  in  their  composi- 
tions on  an  acute  intellect  than  upon  the  direct 
inspiration  of  the  heart.  This  class  of  poets  is 
often  greatly  admired  by  their  contemporaries, 
but  they  make  no  impression  upon  the  great 
heart  of  humanity,  and  their  works  soon  die. 

The  love  of  the  poet,  as  all  love,  is  principally 
expended  in  associations  with  ideas  of  known 
things — such  as  men,  women,  children,  animals, 
flowers,  the  aspects  of  nature — in  short,  all 
natural  objects.  In  other  ^vords,  the  function  of 
the  poet  has  always  been  to  exalt  the  "  beloved 
brotherhood  of  earth,  ocean,  and  air,  and  their 
great  mother,  nature,"  and  to  create  for  our  ad- 
miration the  most  heroic  men  and  the  most  beau- 


HISTORY  OF  ITS  DEVELOPMENT. 


173 


tiful  and  tender-hearted  women.  Toward  such 
things  as  excite  hate  in  others,  the  better  moral 
nature  of  the  poet  is  shown  by  absence  or  lessen- 
ing of  that  hate.  So  that  in  such  a  moral  nature 
the  things  loved  by  an  average  moral  nature  are 
loved  more  :  the  things  neither  loved  nor  hated 
by  an  average  moral  nature  are  loved ;  the  ob- 
jects that  are  disliked  by  the  average  moral  nature 
are  liked  or  are  indifferent  to  this  moral  nature ; 
and  the  things  that  are  hated  by  the  average 
moral  nature  are  hated  not  at  all  or  less  by  the 
higher  moral  nature  supposed.  This  must  be 
understood  not  literally  but  generally,  and  as 
being  not  specifically  but  essent'ally  true.  In  ap- 
plying this  generalization  to  actual  men,  allow- 
ance would  have  to  be  made  for  character — that 
is  to  say,  the  difference  in- different  people  of  the 
adhesions  between  concepts  and  moral  states  (p. 
34).  Given,  then,  such  a  moral  nature,  in  which 
love  Is  largely  developed,  and  hate  proportionately 
dwarfed-  in  which  faith  is  well  developed  and 
fear  below  the  average,  and  along  with  this  a 
good  Intellect,  and  you  have  the  raw  material  of 
an  artist  in  words,  tones,  colors,  or  forms.  We 
will  say  that  the  man  becomes  an  artist — that  he 
becomes  a  poet  ;  many  things  go  to  decide 
whether  this  happens  or  not,  but  we  will  say  it 
happens,  then  what  does  he  do  ?  What  is  the 
manner  of  his  work  ?      His  work  is  to  associate 


••  • 


174 


MAN'S  MORAL   NATURE. 


intellectual  images  with  a  higher  level  of  moral 
feeling  than  had  before  been  associated  with 
those  images,  and  to  this  end  he  expresses  by 
language  both  the  intellectual  concept  and  the 
higher  moral  state  bound  together,  so  that  they 
can  be  and  are  taken  up  by  other  minds,  thus 
planting  in  these  other  minds  the  higher  moral 
state  and  the  improved  association — in  other 
words,  raising  the  moral  nature  of  the  person 
who  receives  the  impress  from  the  superior 
mind  of  the  poet.  Now,  there  are  two  modes 
which  the  poet  may  adopt  to  effect  this  object. 
The  first  corresponds  closely  with  the  method  of 
the  religious  innovator,  and  consists  in  magnify- 
ing, under  the  influence  of  the  emotion  to  be  ex- 
pressed, the  merit  of  the  subject  treated,  whether 
this  be  hero,  heroine,  mountain  view,  flower,  or 
whatever  it  may  be,  so  as  to  entitle  it,  as  it  were, 
to  the  association  with  it  of  a  higher  moral  state. 
The  second  and  most  truly  artistic  method  is  to 
create  or  excite  in  the  mind  of  the  reader  or 
hearer,  by  the  music  of  the  words  used,  and  by 
their  connotations,  both  the  connotations  of  in- 
dividual words  and  of  series  of  words  arranged 
in  a  certain  order,  the  higher  moral  state  which 
is  present  in  the  mind  of  the  poet,  and  in 
which  the  ideas  called  up  by  the  words  are 
bathed,  and  with  which  the  concepts  so  suggested 
become  associated.     Of  course,  the  effect  of  the 


HISTORY  OF  ITS  DEVELOPMENT. 


175 


moral  elevation  is  not  limited  to  the  improved 
association  with  the  ideas  suggested  by  the  poem  ; 
all  other  ideas  which  pass  through  the  mind 
while  the  moral  exaltation  lasts  participate  in  the 
benefit  of  the  exaltation,  so  that  no  one  can  pass 
under  the  influence  of  a  great  artist  without 
having  his  emotions  toward  his  entire  surround- 
ings improved.  The  first  of  the  two  methods 
above  indicated  may  be  compared  to  climbing  up 
a  ladder ;  the  second  to  being  floated  up  by  a 
rising  tide.  It  is  not  usual  for  the  poet  to  em- 
ploy either  of  these  two  methods  alone ;  they  are 
generally  used  together ;  but  sometimes  one  and 
sometimes  the  other  has  most  prominence.  If 
we  want  to  see  them  used  separately — and  in  this 
way  we  shall  best  realize  the  essential  dift'erence 
of  the  two  methods,  and  the  essence  of  each — 
we  must  pass  outside  of  poetry  proper,  and  on 
each  side  of  it  we  shall  see,  on  the  one  side  one, 
and  on  the  other  side  the  other,  method  used,  to 
the  exclusion  of  its  fellow.  On  the  one  side  of 
poetry  stand  the  prose  works  intended  to  appeal 
to  the  emotions  and  passions — that  is,  to  the 
moral  nature — novels,  romances,  tales,  and  stories. 
On  the  other  side  stands  music.  It  easy  to  see 
that  poetry  partakes  of  the  methods  of  these  two 
widely  distinct  modes  of  acting  upon  the  moral 
nature.  It  has  the  idea-suggesting  power  of  the 
one  mode  through  its  words ;  and  it  has  part  of 


176  MAN'S  MORAL    NATURE. 

the  power  of  affecting  the  moral  nature  directly, 
possessed  by  the  other  in  virtue  of  its  rhythm, 
melody,  and  harmony. 

From  all  the  other  arts,  and  Indeed  from  all 
the  other  modes  of  communication  between  indi- 
viduals, music  stands  apart  as  being  the  only 
mode  by  which  one  moral  nature  can  at  will  hold 
intercourse  with  another  without  the  intervention, 
more  or  less  declared,  of  the  intellect.  It  is  also 
the  means  by  which  the  fullest  transference  of 
moral  states  can  be  obtained  ;  that  is,  a  larger 
range  of  moral  states  can  be  communicated  from 
mind  to  mind  by  music  than  in  any  other  way, 
and  probably  the  individual  states  can  be  con- 
veyed more  accurately.  This  being  so,  it  is  un- 
doubted that  music  is  destined  to  play  in  the 
future  of  our  race  a  most  important  part  in  the 
development  of  man's  moral  nature,  probably 
a  more  important  part  than  any  other  single 
agent.  Music  appeals  to  the  sense  of  hearing, 
and  through  this  sense  (p.  103,  et  seq.)  to  the 
moral  nature.  The  composer  must  draw  his  in- 
spiration from  moral  elevation.  The  performer 
and  listener  may  depend  largely,  or  perhaps  even 
altogether,  for  their  skill  and  pleasure  upon  the 
sense  relation,  and  may  be  very  skillful  in  the  one 
case,  and  enjoy  great  pleasure  in  the  other  case, 
and  still  not  have  In  either  case  an  elevated 
moral  nature.     In  this  sense  a  close  parallel  may 


HISTORY  OF  ITS  DEVELOPMENT.  177 

be  drawn  between  music  and  sexual  intercourse, 
using  this  expression  in  its  largest  sense.  Men 
value  women,  and  women  value  men,  for  the 
pleasure  or  for  the  happiness  their  society  gives 
(p.  41,  et  seq.).  As  they  place  the  first  of  these 
%above  the  second  they  descend  toward  the 
brutes.  A's  in  their  every-day  life  the  sec- 
ond ranks  over  the  first,  they  ascend  toward ' 
the  angels,  who  neither  marry  nor  are  given  in 
marriage,  but  who,  we  may  suppose,  love  one 
another  better  than  we  can  love  one  another. 
That  great  musicians  have,  as  a  matter  of  fact 
and  observation,  aside  from  any  theory,  higher 
moral  natures  than  the  average  of  the  people 
among  whom  they  live,  the  biographies  of  these 
men  is  sufficient  evidence  to  me;  The  same  re- 
mark applies  to  poets  and  artists  generally  ;  but 
in  measuring  the  moral  elevation  of  any  artist  or 
any  man  by  the  records  remaining  of  his  life,  or 
by  observation  of  the  life  itself,  it  must  never  be 
lost  sight  of  that  a  man  with  a  high  moral  nature 
and  a  good  man  in  the  conventional  sense  are 
not  necessarily  by  any  means  synonymous  terms. 
I  have  repeated  sufiiciently  often  what  I  mean 
by  a  man  with  a  high  moral  nature.  Now,  by 
the  majority  of  people  a  man  is  called  goodi  in 
proportion  as  he  loves,  trusts,  hates,  or  fears  in 
certain  orthodox  directions — that  is,  in  proportion 
as  his  love,  faith,  hate,  and  fear  are  associated 
8* 


lyg  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

with  proper  or  improper  (i.  e.,  usual  or  unusual, 
expedient  or  inexpedient)  concepts.  If  a  man 
bestows  all  the  love  he  has  upon  his  family, 
friends,  and  estate  ;  all  the  faith  he  has  upon  the 
current  religious  conceptions  and  such  stocks  as 
are  recognized  as  being  safe  ;  if  his  hate  is  ex^ 
pended  upon  personal,  business,  political,  and 
other  opponents,  toward  whom  he  exercises  an 
antagonism  supposed  to  be  legitimate;  and  his 
fear  upon  such  things  as  others  are  also  afraid  of — 
such  a*man,  I  say,  may  have  a  very  limited  stock 
of  love  and  faith,  and  a  liberal  allowance  of  hate 
and  fear,  and  still  may  pass  through  the  world 
regarded  as  a  good  man ;  while  another  man, 
with  incomparably  mor<'  love  and  faith,  and  far 
less  hate  and  fear — such  a  man  as  Shelley,  for 
instance — will  be  considered  immoral  and  irre- 
ligious. Let  the  test  be  applied  as  it  ought  to 
be  applied,  and  it  will  be  found  that  all  nrtists, 
and  especially  all  great  artists,  have  high  moral 
natures.  And  consider  the  matter  impartially, 
and  the  conclusion  will  be  reached  that  upon  this 
fact  and  upon  nothing  else  does  their  charm  and 
their  influence  depend.  The  obverse  of  this  is 
seen  in  the  case  of  men  with  exceptionally  low 
mofal  natures — habitual  criminals.  It  is  said  of 
these  people,  by  those  who  have  had  the  most 
extensive  observation  of  them,  that  they  are 
without  exception  destitute  of  aesthetic  talent,  as 


HISTORY  OF  ITS  DEVELOPMENT. 


179 


well  as  being  without  moral  sense,  though  many 
of  them  have  intellects  up  to  or  above  the  ave- 
rage. 

V.  Religion, — Much  fewer  in  number  and  more 
thinly  distributed  over  the  fe.ce  of  the  earth  and 
through  the  centuries  than  are  the  great  artists 
is  another  class  of  men  superior  to  them  and 
differing  from  them  in  the  proportion  of  the  ele- 
ments which  make  up  their  moral  nature.  These 
are  the  religious  founders  and  innovators.  The  es- 
sential fact  in  the  mental  constitution  of  this  class 
of  men  is  that  faith  in  them  is  preeminently  de- 
veloped ;  love  is  almost  necessarily  nearly  equally 
or  equally  prominent ;  and  according  to  the  prin- 
ciple before  laid  down,  the  intellectual  nature  is 
above  the  average,  and  will  most  likely  be  of  a 
very  high  order.  In  considering  these  men  as 
religious  founders  or  innovators,  the  central  fact 
to  be  considered  is  their  mental  attitude  toward 
the  unknown  world.  Such  a  man  comes  into  the 
world  with  a  moral  nature  which  is  in  advance, 
perhaps  largely  in  advance,  of  the  moral  natures 
of  all  his  contemporaries  in  his  feeling  of  trust 
and  confidence  toward  the  unknown.  He  feels 
that  the  unknown  is  more  favorable  to  man  than 
it  has  ever  been  felt  to  be  before.  He  cannot 
rest  in  this  abstract  feeling;  nor  could  he  com- 
municate it  in  this  abstract  form — or  rather  want 


i8o  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

of  form — for  a  pure  feeling  has  no  form.  He, 
therefore,  gives  it  form  by  means  of  his  intel- 
lectual nature — that  is,  he  shifts  his  intellectual 
attitude  to  make  it  correspond  with  his  moral 
attitude,  and  conveys  to  others  his  improved 
feeling  toward  the  great  unknown  by  giving  a 
different  account  of  that  great  unknown  from 
that  received  up  to  his  time  (p.  23  ^/  seq.).  If, 
for  instance,  it  was  said  up  to  his  time  that 
there  was  a  multitude  of  gods,  each  of  whom  was 
limited  in  his  power  by  the  rest,  and  all  of  whom 
were  rather  doubtful,  or  more  than  doubtful, 
as  to  their  good  will  toward  men,  he  says,  as 
Mahomet  did,  that  there  is  one  God  infinitely 
powerful  and  just.  Or,  if  the  old  belief  was  al- 
ready monotheistic,  he  will  perhaps  substitute  the 
Christian  God  for  the  Jewish  God  ;  and  we  have 
all  some  idea  what  an  enormous  advance  that 
was — one  of  the  greatest  which  was  ever  made 
in  any  field  by  one  man.  So  greTit,  indeed,  that 
the  man  by  whom  it  was  made  is  still  considered 
by  many  millions  of  men  belonging  to  the  most 
advanced  races  to  have  been  more  than  human. 
No  one  will  pretend,  I  think,  that  this  advance 
was  made  by  an  intellectual  effort.  It  could  not 
have  been.  No  intellect  that  we  can  conceive 
could  touch  the  problem.  Neither  is  there  any 
evidence  to  show  that  the  man  by  whom  it  was 
made  was  extraordinarily  great  by  his  intellect. 


HISTORY  OF  ITS  DEVELOPMENT.  i8i 

Neither,  again,  can  it  be  shown,  that  the  substi- 
tution was  an  intellectual  advance.  It  is  as  rea- 
sonable to  believe  in  the  Jewish  God  as  in  the 
Christian  God.  I  do  not  mean  the  Christian  God 
as  conceived  at  present ;  but  as  God  was  con- 
ceived and  portrayed  by  Jesus.  The  Christian 
God,  as  conceived  at  present,  is,  I  think,  a  less 
reasonable  conception  than  the  Jewish  God.  If, 
then,  this  substitution  was  not  effected  by  an  in- 
tellectual effort — and  it  was  not — it  must  have 
been  effected  by  a  moral  effort ;  and  this  is  un- 
doubtedly the  mode  by  which  it  was  actually  ac- 
complished. In  Jesus,  faith  reached  a  level  which 
it  had  never  touched  before  in  any  human  being. 
He  had  more  trust  in  the  unknown  and  more 
confidence  in  the  human  race  than  any  one  ever 
had  before  his  time.  Having  the  wonderful  trust 
in  the  unknown  which  he  did  have,  he  substituted 
for  an  infinitely  powerful,  just,  unrelenting,  and 
though  loving,  yet  jealous  God,  "our  Father  who 
art  in  heaven."  The  difference  is  sufficiently 
marked — the  advance,  from  a  moral  point  of  view, 
unmistakable.  In  making  it,  the  change  of  mo- 
ral attitude  was,  beyond  all  question,  the  initial 
change.  The  shifting  of  the  intellectual  concep- 
tion was  the  means  unconsciously  taken  to  express 
the  advanced  moral  position.  As  the  intellectual 
conceptions  by  which  faith  toward  the  unknown 
is  interpreted  are  purely  factitious — are  useful 


1 82  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 


and  truthful  solely  as  an  interpretation  of  faith, 
and  have  no  objective  value  at  all ;  and  as  altera- 
tions in  the  amount  of  faith  can  only  be  expressed 
in  terms  of  the  intellect  by  giving  a  different 
account  of  the  unknown  ;  so  this  method  used  in 
this  field  has  the  fullest  justification.  It  has 
the  justification  of  necessity.  The  same  method, 
however,  has  been  from  the  earliest  times  ex- 
tensively employed  to  express  a  shifting  of  the 
moral  attitude  toward  the  known  ;  and  here  it  is 
not  justified,  or  at  all  events  not  in  anything  like 
the  same  absolute  manner.  As  Jesus  was  su- 
preme in  faith,  fear  seems  to  have  been  almost 
absent  from  his  nature ;  and  as  he  was  almost,  if 
not  quite,  as  supreme  in  love  as  he  was  in  faith, 
hate  was  reduced  in  him  to  a  minimum  ;  but  while 
there  is  no  positive  evidence  in  the  very  imper- 
fect and  fragmentary  account  of  his  life  which 
has  come  down  to  us,  of  his  ever  having  been 
under  the  influence  of  fear,  there  is  some  evi- 
dence of  his  having  been  several  times  angry. 
Why  did  not  the  Jews  adopt  the  undoubted  ad- 
vance which  Jesus  made?  There  were  two  main 
reasons  why  they  did  not.  The  first  is,  that  from 
their  peculiarly  isolated  position  among  the  peo- 
ples about  them,  and  from  the  long  duration  of 
their  traditions,  the  Jews  differ  from  all  other 
races  in  this — that  the  adhesions  between  moral 
states  and  intellectual  concepts  are  more  close  in 


•HISTORY  OF  ITS  DEVELOPMENT. 


183 


their  mental  organization  than  they  are  in  that 
of  any  other  branch  of  the  human  family.  In 
the  second  place,  the  moral  advance  made  by 
Jesus,  though,  as  said  above,  really  very  great, 
was  not  nearly  so  striking  from  their  compara- 
tively elevated  moral  standpoint  (p.  144  et  seq.^ 
as  it  was  from  the  standpoint  of  the  average 
Greek,  Italian,  Macedonian,  or  Syrian.  In  point 
of  fact,  only  one  Jew,  as  far  as  we  know,  who 
appears  to  have  held  the  religious  convictions  of 
his  age  and  country  with  the  usual  firmness  of 
the  cultivated  Jew,  was  converted  to  Christianity, 
and  this  conversion,  we  are  told,  required  a  mi- 
racle to  effect  it.  So,  too,  in  what  would  be  a 
parallel  though  not  such  an  extreme  case,  it  may 
be  strongly  suspected  that,  should  a  man  appear 
to-day  with  a  moral  nature  bearing  the  same  rela- 
tion to  that  of  the  ordinary  orthodox  Christian 
which  the  moral  nature  of  Jesus  bore  to  that 
of  the  ordinary  orthodox  Jew,  he  would  make 
no  converts  among  orthodox  Christians.  They 
would  reject  him  almost  as  indignantly  as  the 
Jews  rejected  Jesus. 

From  our  present  point  of  view  the  step  made 
by  Jesus  is  seen  to  be,  instead  of  a  step  from  an 
initial  condition  to  a  final  condition,  merely  one 
step  in  an  immense,  perhaps  infinite,  series,  the 
step  itself  having  been  really  a  long  one,  but 
seeming  much  greater  to  us  in  proportion  to  other 


1 84  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 


similar  steps  in  the  same  series  than  it  actually 
was,  from  our  relation  to  it.  Of  this  series  most 
of  the  early  steps  are  buried  in  the  obscurity  of 
the  past,  and  those  which  are  to  come  in  the 
darkness  of  the  future. 

A  moral  nature  like  that  of  Jesus,  standing  high 
above  the  moral  natures  surrounding  it,  trans- 
mits its  influence  by  awakening  faith  and  love  in 
the  men  and  women  with  whom  it  comes  in  con- 
tact. They  pass  on  the  influence  in  their  turn, 
unintentionally,  often  unconsciously,  to  their  con- 
temporaries and  successors.  The  same  moral  level 
becomes  registered  by  the  aid  of  the  Intellect  in 
words,  as  in  the  gospels ;  and  thus  the  good  seed 
grows,  reproduces  its  kind,  and  grows  again.  I 
am  satisfied  that  the  intellect,  so  far  from  playing 
the  chief  part,  as  generally  supposed,  in  this  moral 
advance,  has  scarcely  anything,  perhaps  nothing, 
to  do  with  it.  That  is,  man's  moral  nature  is  not 
improved,  as  a  general  thing,  by  doctrines  got 
from  books  or  from  living  teachers ;  or,  when 
this  does  happen,  the  moral  advance  made  is 
always  due,  not  to  the  doctrine,  but  to  contact 
with  a  superior  moral  nature.  The  moral  nature 
is  undoubtedly  influenced  by  the  perusal  of  books, 
but  not,  or  not  much,  by  the  ideas  contained  in 
them.  We  must  always  recollect  that,  in  almost 
every  book,  except  a  dictionary  or  a  work  on 
mathematics,  we  come  into  contact  in  reading  it 


HISTORY  OF  ITS  DEVELOPMENT. 


185 


with  the  moral  nature  of  the  writer  as  well  as 
with  his  intellectual  nature,  and  it  is  this  moral 
contact  which  influences  our  moral  nature,  and 
not  the  intellectual  contact. 

The  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  that  is  the  leading 
men  of  his  nation,  rejected  Jesus  and  the  moral 
advance  which  he  made.  The  members  of  the 
tribe  of  Koreish,  that  is  the  leading  men  of  his 
nation,  rejected  Mahomet  and  the  undoubted 
moral  advance  which  he  made.  The  Brahmans, 
that  is  the  leading  people  of  his  nation,  rejected 
Siddhartha  Guatama  and  the  probably  great 
moral  advance  which  he  made.  This  is  not  acci- 
dent. It  has  always  been  so,  and  will  always  be 
so.  Such  men  as  these  are  never  appreciated 
until  they  themselves  elevate  the  moral  nature  of 
those  who  receive  and  transmit  their  initiative 
up  to  that  point  from  which  their  own  moral  ele- 
vation can  be  clearly  seen ;  and  these  instances 
may  teach  us  this  lesson  among  others — that,  al- 
though as  an  abstract  proposition,  all  must  admit 
that  it  is  elevation  of  the  moral  nature  which  at 
the  bottom  makes  a  good  man,  yet  that  men  are 
not  thought  good  by  their  contemporaries  in 
proportion  as  their  moral  natures  are  elevated. 
Another  element  in  the  man's  nature,  though 
really  much  less  important,  has  greater  weight 
than  this  has  in  deciding  the  judgment  of  the 
world,  and  that  is  the  associations  which  exist 


l86  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

between  the  elements  of  the  moral  and  intellec- 
tual natures.  For,  let  love  be  developed  in  a 
given  man  to  a  degree  far  above  the  average,  and 
let  it  be  expended,  as  it  must  be  in  that  case, 
upon  objects  which  the  average  of  men  think 
worthless,  and  the  possessor  and  bestower  of 
this  love  receives  no  credit  for  it,  except  from 
the  comparatively  few  people  among  those  who 
surround  him  whom  his  love  stimulates  to  love 
again  ;  he  is  probably  said,  in  the  way  of  re- 
proach, to  be  a  friend  of  publicans  and  sinners. 
Or  let  faith  be  so  far  exalted  as  necessarily  to 
break  loose  from  its  anterior  intellectual  associa- 
tions, and  to  interpret  itself  intellectually  afresh, 
and  the  man  is  inevitably  considered  by  those 
who  surround  him,  as  was  Jesus  by  the  Pharisees, 
Socrates  by  the  Athenians,  and  Spinosa  and 
Shelley  by  the  men  about  them,  to  be  an  atheist. 
The  highest  moral  level  which  the  average  man 
can  understand  and  appreciate,  is  that  measure 
of  love  and  faith  which  fills  and"  warms  into 
fresh  life  the  intellectual  conceptions  with  which 
these  feelings  are  associated  at  the  time  when, 
and  in  the  country  where,  the  man  lives.  If  love 
and  faith  go  beyond  this,  and  overflow  the  old 
conceptions,  then  well  for  mankind,  indeed ;  but 
generally  not  well,  in  the  worldly  sense,  for  the 
subject  of  the  exalted  moral  nature. 

It  will  probably  be  thought  that  in  the  history  of 


HISTORY  OF  ITS  DEVELOPMENT. 


187 


the  development  of  the  moral  nature  something 
should  be  said  of  the  origin  and  growth  of  such 
virtues  as  honesty,  truth,  adhesion  to  principle, 
fidelity  to  duty,  justice,  and  chastity.  But  if  what 
has  been  said  in  this  essay  has  not  failed  in  its 
intention,  if  the  author  has  at  all  succeeded  in  ex- 
pressing what  was  in  his  mind  when  he  wrote  it, 
then  it  will  be  clear  to  the  reader  that  these  vir- 
tues, and  all  others,  have  been  treated  of  either  in 
their  elements  or  by  implication  ;  for  example, 
honesty  is  the  mode  of  action  expressive  of  love 
and  faith,  for  no  man  will  act  dishonestly  toward 
his  neighbor  if  he  loves  him,  and  trusts  God — 
'/.  e.,  right  or  goodness.  So  truth  is  the  mode  of 
speech,  expressive  in  the  same  way  of  love  and 
faith.  Adherence  to  principle  is  an  element  of 
character,  and  not  a  direct  moral  quality.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  fidelity  to  duty,  except  in  cases 
where  this  comes  under  the  head  of  honesty.  Jus- 
tice is  simply  honesty  ;  and  chastity  is,  like  adher- 
ence to  principle,  an  element  of  character — that  is, 
it  arises  from  and  depends  upon  the  strength  and  • 
continuance  of  certain 'bonds  between  a  moral  func- 
tion and  an  intellectual  concept.  All  men  worth 
anything  love  some  woman,  either  ideal  or  real ; 
so  all  women  worth  anything  love  some  man, 
either  ideal  or  real.  It  is  the  strength  and  con- 
tinuance of  the  bond  between  the  moral  state  love 
and  this  concept  carried  into  practical  life  which 


1 88  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

constitutes  chastity.  These  examples  will  serve 
to  show  that  if  the  fundamental  elements  of  the 
moral  nature  are  adequately  treated,  the  whole 
field  of  morality,  though  many  of  the  virtues  may 
not  be  named,  is  really  covered. 

We  have  seen,  then,  in  this  chapter  and  the  last, 
that  in  the  course  of  the  ages  from  savagery  to 
civilization,  love  has  slowly  but  surely  broadened 
and  deepened  in  the  heart  of  man  from  a  mere 
feeble  glimmer  in  our  remote  ancestors  to  what 
we  see  it  to-day.  Arising,  as  it  undoubtedly  did, 
in  the  sexual  and  parental  instincts,  it  spread  to 
the  family,  the  gens,  the  phratry,  the  tribe,  the  na- 
tion, until  almost  within  the  memory  of  living  men 
the  love  of  humanity  was  born.  At  the  same  time 
it  has  extended  to  animal  life  and  to  inanimate 
nature  ;  and  while  it  has  broadened,  it  has  equally 
deepened  ;  for  what  is  the  love  of  a  savage  for  his 
wife,  children,  or  friends,  compared  to  that  of  one 
of  ourselves?  And  as  love  has  broadened  and 
deepened,  so  has  faith.  In  the  same  ratio  hate 
and  fear  have  been  contracted.  It  remains  now 
for  me  to  point  out  the  reason  of  this  change  in 
man's  moral  nature.  It  is  for  this  that  I  have  writ- 
ten this  essay,  and  if  I  do  not  greatly  err  this  rea- 
son is  well  worth  the  consideration  of  every  one 
of  us. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

THE  INFERENCE  TO  BE  DRAWN  FROM  THE  DEVEL- 
OPMENT OF  THE  MORAL  NATURE  AS  TO  THE  ES- 
SENTIAL   FACT    OF   THE    UNIVERSE. 


"  I  swear  the  earth  shall  surely  be  complete  to  him  or  her  who  shall  be 
complete  ! 
I  swear  the  earth  remains  jagged  and  broken  only  to  him  or  her  who 
remains  jagged  and  broken ! " 

"Walt  Whitman. 


Supposing  there  is  such  an  advance  in  the  moral 
nature  as  is  here  claimed  ;  that  hate  and  fear  are 
dying  out,  and  that  love  and  faith  are  becoming 
more  and  more  developed,  what  inference  can  we 
draw  from  this  fact  ?  '  In  the  first  place,  we  may- 
say  with  confidence  that  this  moral  development 
has  not  reached  its  limit,  and  that  it  will  continue 
in  the  future  in  essentially  the  same  direction  that 
it  has  pursued  in  the  past.  So  that  there  must 
come  a  time  when,  should  the  race  of  men  endure 
long  enough,  the  moral  functions  of  fear  and  hate, 
with  their  compounds,  which  of  course  depend  on 
them,  will  be  almost  or  quite  extinct,  like  rudi- 
mentary organs  in  the  higher  vertebrata  which 
linger  long  imperfectly  formed  after  the  animal 
has  outgrown  the  need  of  them  and  at  last  fade 
away  entirely.  And  the  moral  functions  of  love 
and  faith,  with  their  compounds,  will  be  as  much 
in  advance  of  these  same  functions  in  the  best  men 
and  women  of  to-day  as  those  of  to-day  are  in 
advance    of  the  corresponding  functions    in    the 

cave-dweller   of  thirty   or   forty   thousand   years 

191 


192 


MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 


ago,  or  of  his  prototype  the  Bushman  or  Austra- 
lian of  to-day.     The  question  then  arises,  which 
moral  nature  corresponds  to — is  justified  by — the 
fact  of  the  universe  ?     That  of  a  Bushman  ?    That 
of  the  superior  man  or  woman  of  to-day  ?     That 
of  the  man  as  far  in  advance  of  the  superior  man 
or  woman  of  to-day  as  he  or  she  is  in  advance  of 
the  Bushman  ?    Or  none  of  these  ?    Let  us  consider 
this  a  moment.    Man^  active  nature  has  developed 
in  the  past,  is  developing  to-day,  and  every  one 
supposes  it  will  develop  in  the  future.     Why,  and 
how  ?     It  seems  that  it  develops  because  man's 
active  nature  can  only  grow  or  expand  by  becom- 
ing more  and  more   in  accord  with  the  modes  of 
existence  of  force  in  the  external  world  ;  and  be- 
cause man's  active  nature,  like  all  other  functions 
and  organs,  is  torced,  in  accordance  with  the  uni- 
versal  law  of  evolution,   to  expand  or  develop. 
Man's  active  nature  is,  in  fact,  becoming,  by  con- 
tact with  it,  and  as   it  were  by  pressure  upon  it, 
moulded  upon  the  external  world ;  for  by  means 
of  his  active  nature  man  places  himself  in  what 
seem  to  him,  and  are,  in  fact,  more  and  more  ad- 
vantageous positions  toward  the  external  universe. 
He  is  becoming  modified  into  more  complete  adap- 
tation to  this.     He  invents  mechanisms  of  various 
sorts,  which  may  be  looked  upon  as  extensions  of 
his  active  nature.     He  trains  himself  to  do  thou- 
sands of  things  which  it  would  once  have  seemed 


INFERENCE  FROM  ITS  DEVELOPMENT.  193 

to  him  impossible  ever  to  have  achieved,  and  which 
things  are  advantageous  to  him  in  many  ways — 
such  as  protecting  him  from  heat,  cold,  wet,  hunger, 
from  wild  beasts  and  enemies ;  which  are  useful  to 
him  in  attacking  enemies  ;  in  procuring,  accumu- 
lating, and  distributing  the  means  of  subsistence  ; 
in  intercommunication  ;  in  facilities  of  movement 
from  place  to  place.  We  all  know  that  man,  in 
his  active  life,  continually  brings  himself  more  and 
more  into  harmony  with  the  active  forces  of  na- 
ture. The  lightning,  which  was  his  enemy,  he 
makes  a  friend  which  does  his  errands  for  him. 
Steam,  which  was  a  stranger  to  him,  he  makes  a 
slave  to  do  his  work  for  him,  and  carry  him  about; 
and  long  before  he  had  advanced  so  far  as  this, 
animals  which  were  hostile  to  him  or  indifferent  to 
him  were  brought  to  serve  him.  Barren  wastes 
under  his  influence  became  fertile  fields.  He 
crossed  mountains  and  deserts  that  had  been  im- 
passable. He  navigated  seas  upon  which  at  one 
time  he  dared  not  have  ventured,  and  upon  which 
he  could  not  have  preserved  his  life  in  the  least 
storm.  He  painted  pictures,  carved  statues,  built 
towns.  He  wove  cloths,  contrived  tools,  printed 
books.  In  all  these  ways,  and  in  thousands  more, 
we  see  man's  active  nature  adjusting  itself  to  the 
material  universe  in  which  man  finds  himself  placed ; 
for  in  all  the  material  progress  which  man  has  made 
he  created  nothing,  and  did  not  so  much  alter  na- 
9 


194 


MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 


ture  as  himself.  Whoever  will  think  of  it  will  see 
that  the  advance  essentially  consisted  in  this,  that 
man  placed  himself  in  favorable  relations  to  forces 
which  always  existed.  Although  it  is  our  habit  to 
dwell  more  on  the  changes  which  man  has  effected 
in  the  outer  world,  and  less  on  the  changes  which 
the  outer  world  has  effected  in  him,  yet  these 
last  are  the  important  changes,  and  not  the  first. 
Man,  in  his  savage  state,  was,  by  his  active  na- 
ture, in  relation  with  only  a  few  forms  of  mechani- 
cal force  and  a  few  forms  of  heat.  At  present, 
man's  active  relations  with  motion  are  immeasura- 
bly greater  than  then.  His  relations  with  heat, 
through  steam,  the  smelting  furnace,  the  rolling 
mill,  and  innumerable  other  processes  and  indus- 
tries, are  enormously  extended.  His  active  nature 
has  entered  into  relations  with  light — for  instance, 
through  photography,  and  with  the  chemical  forces 
in  thousands  of  processes  in  which  he  avails  himself 
of  the  agency  of  these,  as  in  dyeing,  many  mining 
processes,  and  pharmacy.  Man  is  also  establishing 
relations  between  his  active  nature  and  magnetism, 
as,  for  instance,  in  the  compass,  the  various  uses 
of  the  magnet,  and  the  thermo-multiplier.  But 
still  we  know  that  with  all  these  relations  estab- 
lished this  copartnership  is  only  in  its  infancy. 
There  are  probably  forces  with  which  we  have  as 
yet  formed  iio  relationship.  Who  dreamed  of 
electricity,  niagnetism,  chemical  affinity,  or  of  light 


INFERENCE  FROM  ITS  DEVELOPMENT. 


195 


as  forces  in  the  Stone  Age  ?  and  with  those  men- 
tioned innumerable  other  relationships  will  un- 
doubtedly be  formed,  of  which  we  as  yet  have  no 
conception.  But  the  central  fact  in  this  storm  of  ac- 
tion which  alone  is  important  to  us  here,  and  which 
I  wish  to  make  plain,  is  this,  that  all  the  advance 
made  by  man  in  his  direct  relation  with  the  exter- 
nal world  through  his  active  nature  has  been  ne- 
cessarily justified  by  and  made  possible  by  the  forces 
of  that  external  world  ;  and  that  the  hope  of  any 
further  progress  which  he  may  look  to  make  in 
the  same  direction  must  rest  upon  a  belief,  beyond 
all  doubt  well  founded,  in  the  existence  of  phases  of 
force  with  which  he  may  yet  put  himself  in  relation, 
and  which  will  justify  and  render  possible  a  further 
advance.  We  all  of  us,  in  fact,  believe  that  the 
inter-relationship  between  man's  active  nature  and 
the  forces  of  the  outside  world  is  practically  in  its 
possibilities  unlimited.  That  the  external  world 
is  prepared  to  justify  and  support  any  conceivable 
advance  in  the  same  direction  in  which  man's  ac- 
tive nature  has  advanced  in  the  past — that  man's 
active  development  may  take  in  the  future. 

A  parallel  statement  regarding  mean's  intellec- 
tual nature  would  be  also  true.  This  in  its 
early  crude  state  was  forced  into  contact  with 
the  phenomena  and  relations  which  exist  in 
nature,  and  a  knowledge  of  the  more  obvious 
and  simple  of  them  was  acquired.     Ideas  of  num- 


196  MAN'S   MORAL    NATURE. 

ber,  form,  size,  distance,  movement;  of  the  sun, 
moon,  stars ;  of  Heat,  cold,  hunger,  and  thirst ;  of 
pleasure  and  pain  ;  love  and  hate ;  life  and  death. 
The  order  in  which  vague  ideas  became  con- 
densed into  definite  knowledge  need  not  be  dis- 
cussed here.  All  that  we  want  to  see  is  that  by 
means  of  his  intellectual  nature  man  has  placed 
himself  more  and  more  en  rapport  with  the  facts 
and  laws  of  the  universe;  that  his  intellect 
covers  or  tallies  a  constantly  increasing  surface 
in  space  and  time,  and  constantly  tallies  it  more 
and  more  accurately.  That  is  to  say,  man's 
intellect  becomes  more  and  more  completely 
moulded  on  and  adapted  to  the  external  world — 
is  brought  more  and  more  into  correspondence 
with  it.  We  also  have  good  reason  to  think  that 
our  intellectual  nature  has  so  far  only  come  into 
relation  with  an  infinitely  small  proportion  of  the 
facts  and  laws  of  the  universe.  That  we  are  like 
children  gathering  a  few  handfuls  of  shells  on 
the  sea-shore,  while  the  vast  ocean  of  truth 
stretches  before  us  almost  untouched.  We  have 
reason  to  think  that  the  facts  and  laws  of  the 
universe  would  justify  even  an  infmite  advance 
in  the  direction  which  our  intellectual  nature  has 
travelled  in  the  past  and  is  travelliiig  to-day — 
that  as  force  is  infinite,  so  law  is  infinite. 

Is  there  any  reason  to  suppose  that  the  same 
thing  is  not  true  of  the  moral  nature  and  that 


INFERENCE  FROM  ITS  DEVELOPMENT.  igy 

aspect  of  the  outer  world  with  which  it  corre- 
sponds? Which  moral  nature,  that  of  an  ani- 
mal, of  a  savage,  of  an  average  civilized  man,  the 
highest  moral  nature  we  know,  or  the  moral  sense 
of  a  being  Infinitely  higher  in  the  scale  of  crea- 
tion than  any  of  these — which  moral  sense  of  all 
these  shall  we  believe  to  be  the  one  which  gives 
the  most  faithful  account  of  the  truth  and  value 
to  us  of  the  universe?  Which  is  the  truest 
mirror  and  reflects  this  aspect  of  the  outer  world 
most  faithfully?  We  know  that  the  best  active 
nature,  that  which  is  the  last  evolved,  tallies 
force  less  incompletely,  tallies  a  larger  part  of 
its  surface  than  a  more  incomplete  and  earlier 
active  nature  ;  and  that  it  is  therefore  a  truer 
index  of  force  in  its  entirety  than  a  less  perfect 
active  nature.  We  have  every  reason  to  believe 
also  that  there  are  forms  of  force  which  our  active 
nature  has  not  yet  come  into  relationship  with,  but 
with  which  it  will  probably  some  day  enter  into 
relationship  when  it  has  still  further  developed. 
And  there  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  it  will  enter 
into  more  complete  relationship  in  the  future  than 
it  has  yet  done  with  those  forces  such  as  motion, 
heat,  and  electricity,  with  which  a  relationship  is 
already  established.  It  will  then  tally  more  truly 
than  it  does  now  with  this  aspect  of  the  fact  of  the 
external  world.  We  also  believe  that  an  infinite 
progression   in  this  line  would  be   necessary  to 


198  MAN'S  MORAL  NATURE. 

tally  all  the  variety  of  forces  In  their  infinite  di- 
versity and  combination,  and  that  therefore  an  in- 
finite progression  would  be  required  to  complete 
the  fullest  development  of  the  active  nature  which 
the  forces  or  force  of  nature  would  allow. 

So  we  know  that  our  Intellectual  nature  tallies 
the  facts  and  laws  of  the  universe  more  completely 
now  than  it  did  In  the  past.  We  see,  In  this  field, 
from  the  nature  of  the  case,  far  more  clearly  than 
in  the  other  two  corresponding  fields,  that  it  is 
the  fact  of  the  universe  being  outside  us  and  be- 
ing as  it  is  which  makes  possible,  justifies,  and 
proves  this  advance.  We  see  also  here  more 
clearly  than  elsewhere  that  if  man  continues  to 
live  under  the  same  conditions  as  heretofore  his 
intellectual  nature  must  continue  to  advance  In  the 
same  direction  which  It  has  followed  in  the  past. 
We  see  that  before  man's  Intellectual  nature  shall 
fully  cover  the  phenomena  and  relations  of  the 
universe  an  Infinite  advance  in  its  present  course 
will  have  to  be  made.  That,  in  fact,  the  external 
world  has  justified  what  has  been  done,  and  is  able 
to  justify  an  Infinite  advance  in  the  same  direction. 
Though  we  cannot,  from  the  nature  of  the  case, 
see  it  in  the  same  clear  manner,  the  same  thing 
must  be  true  of  the  moral  nature  and  its  correla- 
tive in  the  external  world.  A  certain  advance  in 
a  certain  line  has  been  made.  That  advance  we 
are  satisfied  is  justified.     Every  one  sees  that  it 


INFERENCE  FROM  ITS  DEVELOPMENT.         199 

is.  No  one  thinks,  or  can  think,  that  his  love 
and  faith  are  not,  on  the  whole,  justified.  Every- 
thing tends  to  show  that  a  further  advance  in  the 
same  line  will  be  made,  and  that  just  as  certainly 
as  made  it  will  be  justified.  Supposing  that  an 
infinite  advance  be  made  in  the  same  line,  will  not 
it  also  be  justified  ?  In  other  words,  hate  and  fear 
are  dying  out.  The  argument  is  that  their  total 
extinction  is  justified.  Faith  and  love  are  increas- 
ing. Infinite  faith  and  love  are  justified.  That 
means  that  there  is  nothing  to  warrant  fear  and 
nothing  to  warrant  hate  in  the  universe.  It  also 
means  that  the  real  nature  of  the  universe  is  such 
that  it  warrants  on  our  part  unlimited  love  and  ab- 
solute trust.  Why,  then,  if  we  live  in  a  world 
where  everything  is  really  good  and  beautiful,  and 
in  which  an  all-powerful  and  infinitely  beneficent 
providence  holds  us  safe  through  life  and  death  in  its 
keeping  forever,  why  should  we  ever  fear  ?  Why 
should  we  ever  hate  ?  For  the  same  reason  that, 
living  in  a  world  of  infinite  possibilities  of  action, 
we  toil  like  slaves  for  a  poor  reward,  the  means  of 
a  bare  subsistence.  For  the  same  reason  that, 
living  in  a  world  of  infinite  law  and  order,  we 
grope  in  the  dark  through  the  centuries  for  scraps 
of  knowledge.  For  the  reason  that  our  moral  na- 
ture, like  our  intellectual  and  active  natures,  is 
bound  in  seven-fold  adamantine  chains,  so  that  we 
cannot  love,  cannot  trust,  just  as  we  cannot  act, 


200  MAN'S   MORAL   NATURE. 

cannot  know,  even  to  the  extent  that  our  petty- 
intellects  tell  us  we  ought,  like  the  half-grown  boy, 
who,  though  he  has  learned  not  to  believe  in  ghosts, 
still  trembles  in  the  dark.  This  is  no  new  theory. 
We  all  recognize,  and  have  recognized  all  along, 
that  this  is  so,  that  the  highest  moral  nature  is 
nearest  in  accord  with  the  truth  of  things.  This  is 
why  we  call  those  men  inspired  who  have  the  most 
exalted  moral  natures,  and  those  men  wise  who 
have  exceptionally  exalted  moral  natures  as  well 
as  superior  intellectual  natures,  and  give  the  man 
with  merely  the  superior  intellectual  nature  and 
a  mediocre  moral  nature  the  lower  title  of  clever, 
and  the  man  with  a  good  intellectual  nature  and 
a  low  moral  nature  we  call  merely  sharp  or  cun- 
ning. This  is  why  we  rank  a  man  of  genius, 
that  is,  a  man  whose  greatness  essentially  con- 
sists in  moral  elevation,  above  a  man  of  talent, 
that  is,  a  man  who  is  great  by  his  intellect  alone 
or  by  his  intellect  chiefly. 

We  see,  then,  do  we  not,  that  religion,  morality, 
and  happiness  are  three  names  for  the  same  thing 
— moral  elevation. 

This,  then,  is  the  end,  the  conclusion  of  the 
whole  matter :  Love  all  things — not  because 
it  is  your  duty  to  do  so,  but  because  all  things 
are  worthy  of  your  love.  Hate  nothing.  Fear 
nothing.  Have  absolute  faith.  Whoso  will  do 
this  is  wise ;  he  is  more  than  wise — he  is  happy. 


